CELEBRATING THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEES FOR FICTION

AALIYAH BILAL was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She has degrees from Oberlin College and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She’s published stories and essays with The Michigan Quarterly Review and The Rumpus. Temple Folk (Simon & Schuster), longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award in Fiction, is her first short story collection.

ELIOT DUNCAN is a United States-born writer and artist. He is the co-founder of the international queer collective Slanted House and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His debut book, Ponyboy: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company), has been longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.

HANNA PYLVÄINEN is the author of We Sinners: A Novel, which received a Whiting Award and a Balcones Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library; as well as residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Lásságámmi Foundation. Pylväinen has taught at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and Virginia Commonwealth University, and she is currently on the faculty at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She lives in Philadelphia. Her latest book, In The End of Drum-Time: A Novel (Henry Holt and Co.), has been longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.

JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS is the author of Black Tickets: Stories, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, and Quiet Dell: A Novel. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. She also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was inducted into the academy in 2018. A National Book Award finalist, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Phillips lives in New York and Boston. Night Watch: A Novel (Knopf) is her latest work.

JUSTIN TORRES is the author of We the Animals: A Novel, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into 15 languages and adapted into a feature film. He was named a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” author, a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Cullman Center fellow at the New York Public Library. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, and The Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UCLA.

LATOYA WATKINS’ debut novel, Perish, was published to great acclaim in 2022. Her writing has appeared in A Public Space, The Sun, McSweeney’s, and the Kenyon Review, among other publications. She has received grants, scholarships, and fellowships from the Camargo Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in a suburb of Dallas. Her latest book, Holler, Child: Stories (Tiny Reparations Books), has been longlisted for a 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.

NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” honorees, is a winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and Saroyan Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Chain-Gang All-Stars: A Novel (Pantheon) is his latest book.

PAUL HARDING is the author of Tinkers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Enon. He is director of the MFA program in creative writing and literature at Stony Brook University, and lives on Long Island, New York.

TANIA JAMES is the author of the novels The Tusk That Did the Damage and Atlas of Unknowns, and the short story collection Aerogrammes. Her fiction has appeared in the Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, One Story, A Public Space, and The Kenyon Review.  She lives in Washington, D.C.