Finalists for National Book Awards Announced The finalists for the National Book Awards were announced on Wednesday, one month before the winners will be named at a ceremony in Manhattan. In fiction, the finalists are Rachel Kushner for "The Flamethrowers" (Scribner); Jhumpa Lahiri for "The Lowland" (Knopf); James McBride for "The Good Lord Bird" (Riverhead); Thomas Pynchon for "Bleeding Edge" (Penguin Press); and George Saunders for "Tenth of December" (Random House). The nonfiction finalists are Jill Lepore for "Book of Ages" (Knopf); Wendy Lower for "Hitler's Furies" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); George Packer for "The Unwinding" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Alan Taylor for "The Internal Enemy" (Norton); and Lawrence Wright for "Going Clear" (Knopf). In young people's literature, the finalists are Kathi Appelt for "The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (Atheneum); Cynthia Kadohata for "The Thing About Luck" (Atheneum); Tom McNeal for "Far Far Away" (Knopf); Meg Rosoff for "Picture Me Gone" (Putnam); and Gene Luen Yang for "Boxers & Saints" (First Second). In the poetry category, the finalists are Frank Bidart for "Metaphysical Dog" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Lucie Brock-Broido for "Stay, Illusion" (Knopf); Adrian Matejka for "The Big Smoke" (Penguin); Matt Rasmussen for "Black Aperture" (Louisiana State University Press); and Mary Szybist for "Incarnadine" (Graywolf Press). Only citizens of the United States are eligible for National Book Awards, which are administered by the National Book Foundation. The award ceremony is Nov. 20.