Winners will be announced on November 15 in Manhattan, and will receive $10,000 and a bronze statue; finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal. The National Book Award is the nation’s “preeminent literary prize.” The National Book foundation seeks to recognize books of exceptional merit written by Americans. Lawrence Ferlinghetti announced this year’s finalists, which were chosen from 1,259 entries submitted by publishers:

Fiction—Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions (Pantheon); Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (Ecco/HarperCollins); Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document (Scribner/Simon & Schuster); Jess Walter, The Zero (Judith Regan Books/HarperCollins).
Nonfiction—Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (Simon & Schuster); Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (Alfred A. Knopf); Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Houghton Mifflin); Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present (HarperCollins); Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Alfred A. Knopf).
Poetry—Louise Glück, Averno (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), H.L. Hix, Chromatic (Etruscan Press), Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw (Copper Canyon Press), Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem (New Directions), James McMichael, Capacity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
Young People’s Literature—M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (Candlewick Press); Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death (Front Street Books/Boyds Mills Press); Patricia McCormick, Sold (Hyperion Books for Children); Nancy Werlin, The Rules of Survival (Dial/Penguin); Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese (First Second/Roaring Brook Press/Holtzbrinck). 

The Judges for the 2006 National Book Awards:

Fiction panel: Bharati Mukherjee (chair), Jonathan Lethem, Craig Nova, David Plante, and Marianne Wiggins.
Nonfiction panel: Jill Jonnes (chair), Kevin Boyle, Randall Kennedy, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Geoffrey Ward.
Poetry panel: James Longenbach (chair), Jimmy Santiago Baca, Li-Young Lee, Claudia Rankine, and C.D. Wright.
Young People’s Literature panel: Margaret Bechard (chair), Patricia McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Benjamin Alire Saenz, and Jude Watson.

Related awards:

2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters: poet Adrienne Rich.
Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community: Brothers Epstein and Robert Silvers, founders of the New York Review of Books (Epstein died in June).