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 were announced this week, and Minnesota publishers were well-represented.

Of the 30 finalists, spread across six categories, three came from independent Minneapolis presses: Graywolf Press, Coffee House Press and Milkweed Editions. 

The Minneapolis triad is made more notable by the fact that 21 of the award's 30 finalists come from New York City-based publishers or imprints. Of the remaining nine, five were published by university presses (Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Brandeis, University of Pittsburgh). 

That leaves just four finalists published by independent presses outside of New York — three of which are based in Minneapolis: Graywolf, Coffee House and Milkweed. Copper Canyon, a poetry press in Port Townsend, Wash., was the other independent press outside New York with a finalist. Notably, all four are non-profit organizations.

Maggie Nelson's "The Argonauts" was named a finalist in the criticism category. Nelson's book has been hailed as a genre-defying piece of nonfiction. "The Argonauts" chronicles Nelson's pregnancy, her relationship with her fluidly gendered partner, and the process of building a family. Nelson winds the the work of critical theorists and other influential thinkers into her own story. 

Valeria Luiselli's "The Story of My Teeth" was named a finalist in the fiction category. Translated by Christina MacSweeney, Luiselli's delightfully bizarre novel follows Highway, a world traveler and renowned auctioneer, who collects teeth — specifically, the teeth of influential thinkers, like Plato, Marilyn Monroe and Virginia Woolf. 

Ada Limon's "Bright Dead Things" was named a finalist in the poetry category.  The collection explores the shifting nature of self. The 

 called it her "most gorgeous book of poems."

The winners will be announced on March 17.


• "The Light of the World" by Elizabeth Alexander


• "The Odd Woman and the City" by Vivian Gornick


• "Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth" by Terry Alford


• "Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley" by Charlotte Gordon


• "Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America" by T.J. Stiles


• "Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva" by Rosemary Sullivan


• "Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives" by Karin Wieland and Shelly Frisch


• "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates


• "Eternity's Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake" by Leo Damrosch


• "On Elizabeth Bishop" by Colm Tóibín


• "The Nearest Thing to Life" by James Wood


• "The Story of My Teeth" by Valeria Luiselli


• "The Tsar of Love and Techno" by Anthony Marra


• "SPQR: A History of Rome" by Mary Beard


• "Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America" by Ari Berman


• "Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America" by Jill Leovy


• "Dreamland: The True Story of America's Opiate Epidemic" by Sam Quinones


• "What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing" by Brian Seibert


• "Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude" by Ross Gay


• "Parallax and Selected Poems" by Sinéad Morrissey


• "What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford" by Frank Stanford

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Tracy Mumford

Author

Predictably, the majority of the award finalists come from New York-based publishers, but Minnesota had the most finalists outside the Empire State.

The Minnesota finalists for the NBCC awards

Minnesota publishers make their mark with National Book Critics Circle Award finalists

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