Two University of Iowa graduates and an Iowa faculty member are finalists for the prestigious National Book Award.

The shortlist includes five titles each in five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature. Winners of the National Book Award competition, which is administered by the National Book Foundation, will be announced Nov. 20.

The Iowa writers whose books are being considered for the award:

Fiction

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

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.

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. A citizen 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. 

Iowa writers who made the initial cut in September include Elizabeth Willis, a faculty member in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, for Liontaming in America, and Tony Tulathimutte, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2012, for Rejection.

For the past century, the University of Iowa’s writing programs have been shaping the landscape of American literature. With more than 40 Pulitzer Prize winners, seven U.S. Poets Laureate, and countless award-winning playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, translators, novelists, and poets, Iowa is known as a leader in the writing arts.