Book award season enters high gear as the National Book Award finalists have been released in a series of four longlists consisting of ten books apiece. Five finalists in each category will be announced on October 15, and winners will be announced in New York City on November 19.

One of the fiction finalists will be especially familiar to Millions readers. Emily St. John Mandel, whose Station Eleven has been winning high praise, has been a staff writer for us since 2009. Now might be a good moment to revisit her first piece for us: “Working the Double Shift” examined how many writers must write as a “second career” while a day job pays the bills.

You read about nearly all of the books on the Fiction longlist here first, as they appeared in our indispensable first-half and second-half previews.

In the other categories, many have pointed out that the Non-Fiction longlist includes just a single book by a female author.

Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:

Fiction:

Nonfiction:

Poetry:

Young People’s Literature: