Frank Bidart among poets on National Book Awards long list

NEW YORK – An anthology covering a half-century of Frank Bidart’s poetry and three debut collections were among the National Book Award nominees announced Wednesday.

The National Book Foundation released a long list of 10 poetry works, a day after announcing the long list for young people’s literature. Nonfiction and fiction lists come out later in the week.

The lists will be narrowed to five on Oct. 4. Winners will be announced at a dinner ceremony in Manhattan on Nov. 15.

Bidart, whose many honours include the National Book Critics Circle prize and the Wallace Stevens Award, was cited Wednesday for the anthology “Half-light.” The debut works nominated were Chen Chen’s expansively titled “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,” Layli Long Soldier’s “Whereas” and Mai Der Vang’s “Afterland.”

Sherod Santos, a previous finalist for the National Book Award, was nominated for “Square Inch Hours” and Marie Howe was chosen for “Magdalene,” in which Mary Magdalene is placed in the modern world.

The other nominees are Laura Kasischke for “Where Now,” Danez Smith’s “Don’t Call Us Dead,” Leslie Harrison’s “The Book of Endings” and Shane McCrae’s “In the Language of My Captor.”

A panel of five judges selected the long list from 245 books submitted by publishers.