National Book Award nonfiction longlist announced; includes Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sally Mann

The National Book Foundation continued its week of releasing the longlists for its 2015 prizes with the Wednesday announcement of the 10 books up for the National Book Award in Nonfiction.

The list includes books of history, science, religion, essay and memoir, and includes author Ta-Nehisi Coates and photographer Sally Mann. All ten authors are contending for a National Book Award in Nonfiction for the first time.

The shortlist for the awards is to be announced Oct. 16, and the winners announced at a gala in New York on Nov. 18.

The complete nonfiction longlist is below:

Cynthia Barnett, “Rain: A Natural and Cultural History” (Crown/Penguin Random House)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me” (Spiegel and Grau/Penguin Random House)

Martha Hodes, “Mourning Lincoln” (Yale University Press)

Sally Mann, “Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs” (Little, Brown/Hachette Book Grou)

Sy Montgomery, “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness” (Atria/Simon and Schuster)

Susanna Moore, “Paradise of the Pacific: Approaching Hawai’i” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan)

Michael Paterniti, “Love and Other Ways of Dying” (The Dial Press/Penguin Random House)

Carla Power, “If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran” (Henry Holt and Company/Macmillan)

Tracy K. Smith, “Ordinary Light: A Memoir” (Alfred A. Knopf)

Michael White, “Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir” (Persea Books)

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