Ta-Nehisi Coates is a finalist for National Book Award

“Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blunt and impassioned letter to his son about racism and police violence, is a finalist for the National Book Awards.

Coates’ work, one of the top sellers this summer, is among 10 nominees announced Wednesday by the National Book Foundation, which presents the awards.

The list also includes Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith’s memoir “Ordinary Light,” the photographer Sally Mann’s “Hold Still” and environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett’s “Rain: A Natural and Cultural History.”

Judges will narrow the list to five on Oct. 14, with the winner to be announced Nov. 18 in New York City. Longlists for poetry and young people’s literature came out earlier this week, and the final category, fiction, is scheduled for Thursday.

Susanna Moore is a nonfiction nominee for “Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawaii.” The other finalists are Martha Hodes’ “Mourning Lincoln,” Sy Montgomery’s “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” Michael Paterniti’s “Love and Other Ways of Dying,” Carla Power’s “If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran” and Michael White’s “Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir.”

Hillel Italie, Associated Press

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