National Book Award Finalists on OPB

This year the twenty finalists for the 62nd National Book Awards will be announced on Oregon Public Broadcasting's morning radio program, Think Out Loud, in front of a live audience (which will include one of our very own.....). Can you believe it? This is huge! The National Book Award finalists, being announced to the world from our own backyard. Wow. Here are the details:

On Wednesday, October 12th, from 9:06 am to 9:59 am PST, OPB's Think Out Loud will broadcast a special National Book Award show from the new Literary Arts Center in Portland, announcing the 2011 finalists in four categories. Listen to the show live on OPB Radio at 91.5 FM or watch the live video stream during the broadcast. They will also be live-blogging the event with regular updates of the announcements, and you can join in on the conversation there. Check out author interviews on OPB's website prior to the broadcast.

Host David Miller will interview guests about the National Book Awards and their experiences as winners, finalists, judges and organizers. This year’s finalists will be announced during the show at the following times: 

9:15 am: Young People's Literature Finalists Announced by Virginia Euwer Wolff
Virginia Euwer Wolff is the author of six novels for young people, including Make Lemonade, winner of the Oregon Book Award for Young Readers, and True Believer, which won the National Book Award in 2001 and was a Printz Award Honor Book. Her most recent book, This Full House (2010), completes her Make Lemonade trilogy.

9:30 am: Poetry Finalists Announced by Vern Rutsala
Vern Rutsala is the author of 12 collections of poetry, including Laments, The Journey Begins, Little-Known Sports, and The Moment's Equation, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award in 2005. He has been the recipient of two NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Juniper Prize, the Oregon Book Award and the Pushcart Prize, among other honors.

9:37 am: Nonfiction Finalists Announced by Sallie Tisdale
Sallie Tisdale was a National Book Award Nonfiction Judge in 2010. She is the author of The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales of the Modern Hospital (1986), Harvest Moon: Portrait of a Nursing Home (1987), Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate History of Sex (1994) and The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food (2000). Tisdale is an editor at Harper's as well as a columnist for the online magazine Salon, and her work frequently appears in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times Magazine and The Antioch Review. Her most recent book, Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom, was published in 2007.

9:52 am: Fiction Finalists Announced by Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson won the National Book Award in Fiction for Middle Passage in 1990 and was a Fiction Judge in 1999 and 2009. Johnson has written four novels, including Soulcatcher (2001), and has written more than twenty screenplays and numerous reviews and book introductions. His many awards and honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1979), the Writers Guild Award (1985), the Prix Jeunesse Award (1985), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1990), a MacArthur Fellowship (1998), and the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award (2000).

Winners of the 62nd National Book Awards will be announced in a ceremony and benefit dinner in New York City on November 16th. The event will be hosted by actor, author, and composer John Lithgow. Winners last year were Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule (fiction), Patti Smith for Just Kids (nonfiction), Terrance Hayes for Lighthead (poetry), and Kathryn Erskine for Mockingbird (young people's literature). The 2010 finalists were announced from Flannery O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah, Georgia.

We hope you can tune in tomorrow morning to catch the show! Who do you think should be nominated?? We'll report the results in a blog later this week -- and Roberta can tell us all how much fun she had!