Two 2015 National Book Award Finalists in Nonfiction: A Reading

A journalist specializing in Muslim societies, global social issues and culture, Carla Power writes for Time and is a former correspondent for Newsweek, where she produced award-winning stories, reporting from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Her essays have appeared in a wide range of publications, from Vogue and O: The Oprah Magazine to The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. Power is the author of the If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran (Henry Holt)—a 2015 National Book Award Finalist, Nonfiction —is an account of her year spent studying with the traditional Islamic scholar Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi. NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2015

CANCELLED

Sally Mann is one of America's most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Her many books include What Remains, Deep South, and the Aperture titles At Twelve, Immediate Family, Still Time, Proud Flesh, and The Flesh and the Spirit . A feature film about her work, What Remains, debuted to critical acclaim in 2006. Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (Little, Brown and Company) is revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history. Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder." Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2015