National Book Awards longlist includes titles on border wall, Tribe Called Quest

NEW YORK — A memoir by chef Iliana Regan and Hanif Abdurraqib’s best-selling chronicle of A Tribe Called Quest are among the works on the nonfiction longlist for the National Book Awards.

The 10 books announced Thursday by the National Book Foundation feature authors mostly new to the National Book Awards, with subjects also including President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall (Greg Grandin’s “The End of the Myth”) and racism in the real estate industry (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s “Race for Profit”). Tressie McMillan Cottom was cited for the essay collection “Thick,” Patrick Radden Keefe for “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” and David Treuer for “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.” Others on the longlist are Sarah M. Broom’s “The Yellow House,” Carolyn Forché’s “What You Have Heard is True” and Albert Woodfox’s prison memoir “Solitary,” written with Leslie George.

According to the book foundation, which presents the awards, Abdurraqib’s “Go Ahead in the Rain” is the first work centered on hip-hop to make the nonfiction list.

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The list for nonfiction and four other competitive categories — poetry, translation, young people’s literature and fiction, to be announced Friday — will be narrowed to five on Oct. 8. Winners will be announced Nov. 20.