Each year, the editors of The Believer present awards to the works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry they find to be the best written and most underappreciated. For the first time ever, we’re honoring comics and graphic work in a distinct Graphic Narrative category. Below are the longlists of nominees for each category. The short lists and winners will be announced online in the spring.
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Fiction
- What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron (Catapult)
- Long Live the Post Horn! by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Verso Books)
- The White Dress by Nathalie Léger (Dorothy)
- Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Atlantic)
- How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company)
- Telephone by Percival Everett (Graywolf Press)
- The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson (Coach House Books)
- The Suspended Vocation by Pierre Klossowski, translated by Jeremy M. Davies and Anna Fitzgerald (Small Press)
- Brief Lives of Idiots by Ermanno Cavazzoni, translated by Jamie Richards (Wakefield Press)
- Sansei and Sensibility by Karen Tei Yamashita (Coffee House Press)
Nonfiction
- Stranger Faces by Namwali Serpell (Transit Books)
- Lecture by Mary Cappello (Transit Books)
- A Fish Growing Lungs by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn (Burrow Press)
- Heaven by Emerson Whitney (McSweeney’s)
- Stakes Is High by Mychal Denzel Smith (Bold Type Books)
- The Meaning of Soul by Emily J. Lordi (Duke University Press)
- The Lonely Letters by Ashon T. Crawley (Duke University Press)
- Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo (Seal Press)
- Set the Night on Fire by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener (Verso Books)
- Out of Nowhere Into Nothing by Caryl Pagel (FC2)
Poetry
- Fantasia for the Man In Blue by Tommye Blount (Four Way Books)
- All the Gay Saints by Kayleb Rae Candrilli (Saturnalia Books)
- Borderland Apocrypha by Anthony Cody (Omnidawn)
- Exclusions by Noah Falck (Tupelo Press)
- In the Lateness of the World by Carolyn Forché (Penguin Press)
- Runaway by Jorie Graham (Ecco)
- You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love by Yona Harvey (Four Way Books)
- La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living by Jennifer Hasegawa (Omnidawn)
- Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo (Four Way Books)
- Underworld Lit by Srikanth Reddy (Wave Books)
- Rift Zone by Tess Taylor (Red Hen Press)
- Death Industrial Complex by Candice Wuehle (Action Books)
Graphic Narrative
- Dancing After TEN by Vivian Chong and Georgia Webber (Fantagraphics)
- Odessa by Jonathan Hill (Oni Press)
- From Truth With Truth by Lawrence Lindell (Self Published)
- Shame Pudding by Danny Noble (Street Noise)
- Wendy, Master of Art by Walter Scott (Drawn and Quarterly)
- Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som (Feminist Press)
- The Man Without Talent by Yoshiharu Tsuge, translated by Ryan Holmberg (New York Review Books)
- One Story by Gipi, translated by Jamie Richards (Fantagraphics)
- The Contradictions by Sophie Yanow (Drawn and Quarterly)
- Grip by Lale Westvind (Perfectly Acceptable)
