CELEBRATING THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEES FOR FICTION

JESSICA ANTHONY is the author of three books of fiction, including her most recent title, The Most (‎Little, Brown and Company), and Enter the Aardvark (Little, Brown and Company), a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. She has been a butcher in Alaska, an unlicensed masseuse in Poland, a secretary in San Francisco, and is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature. She wrote Enter the Aardvark and The Most while working as a bridge guard for the Maria Valeria Bridge between Sturovo, Slovakia, and Esztergom, Hungary. Usually, she lives in Maine and teaches at Bates College.

KAVEH AKBAR’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

NATALIE GREEN is the director of programs and partnerships at the National Book Foundation. Before joining the foundation, she was the manager of Los Angeles Programs at PEN America. Green holds a B.A. in English and creative writing from UCLA, co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends committee, and organizes with North Brooklyn Mutual Aid.

’PEMI AGUDA is an MFA graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her writing has been published in Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, and other publications, and has been awarded the O. Henry Prize for short fiction. She is from Lagos, Nigeria, and currently lives in Philadelphia.

RACHEL KUSHNER is the author of the acclaimed essay collection The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 (Scribner), and the internationally bestselling books The Mars Room: A Novel (Scribner), The Flamethrowers: A Novel (Scribner), and Telex from Cuba: A Novel (Scribner), as well as a collection of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K (New Directions). She won the Prix Médicis and was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Her books have been translated into 27 languages.

SAM SAX is a queer Jewish writer and educator. They are the author of Madness (Penguin Books), winner of The National Poetry Series, and Bury It (Wesleyan University Press), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Sax is a two-time Bay Area GrandSLAM Champion, with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Granta, and elsewhere. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, and Yaddo, and are currently serving as a lecturer in the ITALIC program at Stanford University. Their first novel, Yr Dead (McSweeney’s) was published in 2024.

TONY TULATHIMUTTE is the author of Private Citizens: A Novel (William Morrow) and Rejection: Fiction (William Morrow). His work has appeared in The Paris Review, n+1, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. The recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award, he runs CRIT, a writing class in Brooklyn, New York.