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Didion, Doctorow finalists for National Book Award

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 16:05 CDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - E.L. Doctorow's Civil War novel "The March," and Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," a memoir of her husband's death and daughter's illness, were among finalists announced on Wednesday for the National Book Award.

The U.S. National Book Foundation's annual awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature will be presented at a November 16 at a ceremony in Manhattan, where novelist Norman Mailer and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti are to receive lifetime achievement awards.

In nonfiction, the five nominated books also cover topics from slavery to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ecology and efforts to save lives in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Besides Didion's book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, the nonfiction nominees were Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn's "102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers," published by Times Books; Alan Burdick for "Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion," from Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Leo Damrosch for "Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius," published by Houghton Mifflin, and Adam Hochschild for "Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves," from Houghton Mifflin.

Didion and Doctorow are among the best-known and popular of the nominees, after the foundation came under fire last year for nominating a narrow range of obscure writers.

Didion's works include her essay collection "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" and the novel "The Last Thing He Wanted." Doctorow is the author of such best-sellers as "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate."

Joining Doctorow among the fiction nominees were "Veronica," by Mary Gaitskill and published by Pantheon; "Trance, by Christopher Sorrentino and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux; "Holy Skirts," by Rene Steinke and published by William Morrow; and "Europe Central," by William Vollmann and published by Viking. Doctorow's "The March" was published by Random House.

Influential poets John Ashbery, for "Where Shall I Wander," published by Ecco, and W.S. Merwin, for "Migration," from Copper Canyon Press, were among the poetry nominees. The others were Frank Bidart for "Star Dust," published by Farrar, Straus; Brendan Galvin for "Habitat," from Louisiana State University Press, and Vern Rutsala for "The Moment's Equation," published by Ashland Poetry Press.

Walter Dean Myers, whose gritty children's books have been banned from some U.S. school libraries, was among the nominees in young people's literature, for "Autobiography of My Dead Brother," published by HarperTempest.

The category's other nominees were Jeanne Birdsall for "The Penderwicks," published by Knopf; Adele Griffin for "Where I Want to Be," published by Putnam; Chris Lynch for "Inexcusable," published by Atheneum; and Deborah Wiles for "Each Little Bird That Sings," published by Harcourt.

Source: REUTERS

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