Three weeks ago I mentioned that the National Book Foundation was preparing to announce the finalists for the National Book Award in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature. And today … I realized that I never shared the list of finalists with you.

The nominees are:

FICTION

Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)

Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W. W. Norton & Co.)

Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)

Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

NONFICTION

David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)

Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)

T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf)

POETRY

Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)

Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Penguin Books)

Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Henry Holt)

Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

David Small, Stitches (W. W. Norton & Co.)

Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)

Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

According to the National Book Foundation Web site, 193 publishers submitted 1,129 books for the 2009 National Book Awards. The total number of books by genre included fiction, 236; nonfiction, 481; poetry, 161; and young people’s literature, 251.

It couldn’t have been an easy task to narrow the submissions to the above finalists. The winners will be announced at a dinner and ceremony Nov. 18 in New York City.

If you’d like to get in on the action, Oxford University Press is hosting a contest to see who can pick the most NBA winners. Check out the contest here … and let me know if you win some loot!

Tags: award, contest

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