The National Book Foundation announced its 2015 National Book Awards Longlists this week and three titles published by Penguin Publishing Group imprints were recognized.
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books) is on the Longlist for Fiction.
The New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
NPR,
USA Today, and
Entertainment Weekly have all commented on the list, with Groff’s name right at the top.
The New York Times Book Review praised Groff’s “complex and remarkable novel“ as did Ron Charles at the
Washington Post (
“Lauren Groff just keeps getting better and better…
Fates and Furies is a clear-the-ground triumph
”), Robin Black for the
New York Times Book Review (“Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and
Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers.”) and fellow author Richard Russo, who selected as the third Book Club Pick for
NPR’s Morning Edition.
Scattered at Sea by Amy Gerstler (Penguin Books) and
How to be Drawn by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Books) are on the Longlist for Poetry. In How to Be Drawn (Penguin Books), his daring fifth collection, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award–winning author of
Lighthead,
explores how we see and are seen. While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes’s background as a visual artist, they do not strive to describe art so much as inhabit it. Upon publication,
How to be Drawn received significant praise, with reviews appearing on
NPR.org,
Slate, and
The New Yorker. The poems in Amy Gerstler’s eleventh collection,
Scattered at Sea (Penguin Poets), are caffeinated, wryly perverse, assured verbal performances that explore notions of gender, ancestry, bereavement and the nature of prayer. Upon publication,
Scattered at Sea garnered acclaim from critics at the
Boston Globe, the
Kansas City Star, and Elizabeth Lund from the
Washington Post, who says the book “changes how you view the world.”

Congratulations to the authors and publishers of these outstanding works.
The National Book Awards Shortlist will be announced on October 14, with the winners to be announced on November 18 at a dinner in New York.