5 writers with Iowa ties longlisted for National Book Award

Monday, September 16, 2024

Three University of Iowa graduates and two Iowa faculty are listed among the authors being considered for the prestigious National Book Award.

The longlist includes 10 titles each in five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature; finalists are announced in October and the winners in November.

The Iowa writers whose books have been placed on the longlist:

Fiction

Kaveh Akbar, associate professor and director of the undergraduate English and creative writing major, for Martyr!He is the author of two poetry collections, Pilgrim Belland Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine.

Tony Tulathimutte, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2012, was noted for Rejection. Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and the recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award. He runs the writing class CRIT in Brooklyn, New York.

Nonfiction

Deborah Jackson Taffa, who earned an MFA in 2013 from the UI Nonfiction Writing Program, was noted in the nonfiction writing category for her memoir, Whiskey Tender. Acitizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Taffa is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Poetry

m.s. RedCherries, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2021 and a law degree from Arizona State University, received a poetry nod for mother. She is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Elizabeth Willis, a faculty member in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was longlisted in poetry for Liontaming in America. Willis has written six books of poetry, including Pulitzer Prize finalist Alive: New and Selected Poems, and is the editor of the essay collection Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place.

Winners of the National Book Awardcompetition, which is administered by the National Book Foundation, will be announced Nov. 20.