Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Masha Gessen, Elliot Ackerman Among National Book Awards Finalists

Masha Gessen and Elliot Ackerman are among the finalists for this year’s National Book Awards.

Gessen’s “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” released this week, is a finalist for the award in nonfiction. Ackerman’s sophomore novel “Dark at the Crossing” is a finalist for the award in fiction. It is both writers’ first appearance as finalists for the prestigious honors. In 2016, Gessen served as a nonfiction judge for the Awards.

Nominated alongside Ackerman for fiction are Lisa Ko for “The Leavers,” Min Jin Lee for “Pachinko,” Carmen Maria Machado for “Her Body and Other Parties: Stories” and Jesmyn Ward for “Sing, Unburied, Sing.”

Finalists in the nonfiction category, alongside Gessen, are Erica Armstrong Dunbar for “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge,” Frances FitzGerald for “The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America,” David Grann for “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” and Nancy MacLean for “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.”

Winners of the Awards will be announced at a gala on November 15.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.