People, Awards, Etc.

PublishersLunch

Judges have been announced for this year's National Book Awards, the first time that the prizes expand their judging ranks beyond exclusively writers to include other literary tastemakers. The fiction judges include Elliott Bay Book Company buyer Rick Simonson and former NYTBR editor Chip McGrath (who chairs the panel), along with Charles Baxter, Gish Jen and Rene Steinke. The nonfiction panel features former Harcourt publisher and current vp of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Andre Bernard, alongside Jabari Asim; M.G. Lord; Lauren Redniss; and Eric Sundquist. The young people's literature panel includes Books of Wonder owner Peter Glassman and curator of the Children's Literature Research Collections of the University of Minnesota Lisa Von Drasek, along with Deb Caletti; Cecil Castellucci; and E. Lockhart. And the poetry panel includes 2011 winner Nikky Finney and PW poetry reviews editor Craig Morgan Teicher, along with Jahan Ramazani, Ada Limon, and DA Powell.

In other awards news, the ABA announced the candidates for this year's Indies Choice Awards. The winners will be named April 18. Among the finalists are:

Adult Fiction
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jan Philipp Sendker (Other Press)
Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter (Harper)
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain (Ecco)
The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller (Knopf)
The Orphan Master’s Son, by Adam Johnson (Random House)
The Round House, by Louise Erdrich (Harper)

Adult Nonfiction
Elsewhere, by Richard Russo (Knopf)
The End of Your Life Book Club, by Will Schwalbe (Knopf)
Quiet, by Susan Cain (Crown)
Thomas Jefferson, by Jon Meacham (Random House)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson (Grove Press)
Wild, by Cheryl Strayed (Knopf)

Adult Debut
The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House)
In the Shadow of the Banyan, by Vaddey Ratner (Simon & Schuster)
A Land More Kind Than Home, by Wiley Cash (William Morrow)
The Orchardist, by Amanda Coplin (Harper)
The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey (Little, Brown)
The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers (Little, Brown)

The Hugo Award nominations were also announced over the weekend in several categories, with Seanan McGuire nominated a record five times (writing under her own name as well as the pseudonym Mira Grant.)