Colson Whitehead, John Lewis, Rita Dove Among National Book Award Nominees

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And so the opening salvo of the National Book Awards has been launched ... gradually.

Over the past four days, the National Book Foundation has been rolling out the lists of nominees for its prestigious literary prize in waves — beginning the week by revealing the nominees for its young people's literature, nonfiction and poetry prizes. On Thursday, the foundation capped the multiday rollout with the release of its longlist of 10 nominees for the fiction prize.

In case you're counting at home, that means 40 works remain in contention for the prize. You can find all of them below, or if you're searching for just one longlist in particular, you can jump to it right here: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.

Unlike the shortlist for the U.K.-based Man Booker Prize, which was announced Tuesday, the long lists for the National Book Awards still feature their fair share of familiar names — albeit occasionally in different genres than we saw them last. Jacqueline Woodson, who has won an NBA in young people's literature, returns with Another Brooklyn, her first novel for adults in two decades. Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won last year's Pulitzer for his fiction, makes an appearance on the long list for nonfiction for Nothing Ever Dies -- which, like his 2015 novel, delves into the kaleidoscopic legacy of the Vietnam War. And Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, iconic activist and politician, joins his collaborators Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell on the YPL list for their third volume in a graphic memoir series on the civil rights movement.

Still, it's all but impossible to distill a list of 40 works, teeming as they are with all their complexities, down to a few snappy summaries. So instead, we'll leave you with the lists and what to expect next: The finalists will be announced on Oct. 13, and the winners will be announced at a New York gala on Nov. 16.

Until then, happy reading.

National Book Award Longlists

Fiction

Chris Bachelder, The Throwback Special

Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You

Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone

Paulette Jiles, News of the World

Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs

Elizabeth McKenzie, The Portable Veblen

Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven

Brad Watson, Miss Jane

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn

Nonfiction

Andrew J. Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History

Patricia Bell-Scott, The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice

Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War

Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

Manisha Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition

Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Poetry

Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human

Rita Dove, Collected Poems 1974 — 2004

Peter Gizzi, Archeophonic

Donald Hall, The Selected Poems of Donald Hall

Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall

Donika Kelly, Bestiary

Jane Mead, World of Made and Unmade

Solmaz Sharif, Look

Monica Youn, Blackacre

Kevin Young, Blue Laws

Young People's Literature

Kwame Alexander, Booked

Kate DiCamillo, Raymie Nightingale

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell (Artist) March: Book Three

Grace Lin, When the Sea Turned to Silver

Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours

Meg Medina, Burn Baby Burn

Sara Pennypacker & Jon Klassen (Illustrator), Pax

Jason Reynolds, Ghost

Caren Stelson, Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor's Story

Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also A Star