The names of the judges for this year's National Book Awards were announced this morning, and included in the stellar group are Minnesota writer Charles Baxter and Graywolf Press poet D.A. Powell.

Baxter, author of "The Feast of Love," a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award, is the Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book is "Gryphon," a collection of short stories.

He will be joined as fiction judge with novelist Gish Jen ("Typical American"), Rene Steinke, a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for "Holy Skirts," and -- for the first time in many years -- two people who are not authors, Charles McGrath, fromer editor of the New York Times Book Review, and Rick Simonson, a bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle.

Judges for nonfiction are Jabari Asim, Andre Bernard, M.G. Lord, Lauren Redniss, and Eric Sundquist.

Poetry judges are Nikky Finney, author of "Head Off & Split," which won the 2011 National Book Award; Ada Limon, Graywolf Press poet D.A. Powell, who won a 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for "Useless Landscape: Or, A Guide for Boys"; Jahan Ramazani, and Craig Morgan Teicher, author of "Cradle Book."

Young people's literature will be judged by Deb Caletti, Cecil Castellucci, Peter Glassman, E. Lockhart, and Lisa Von Drasekis.

Charles Baxter.

The awards will be announced in New York City on Nov. 20.