4 Iowa alums longlisted for National Book Award

Four University of Iowa graduates are listed among the authors being considered for the prestigious National Book Award.

The longlist includes 10 titles each in five categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature; finalists are announced in October and the winners in November.

The Iowa writers whose books have been placed on the longlist:

Fiction

Angela Flournoy, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2011, for The Wilderness. Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize; and selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, an Indie Next List pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Kevin Moffett, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2005, for Only Son. Moffett is the author of two short story collections, as well as The Silent History, a narrative app for mobile devices. His work has been awarded the National Magazine Award for Fiction, the Nelson Algren Literary Award, and a Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Joy Williams, who earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1965, for The Pelican Child. Williams is the author of five previous novels-including Harrow, a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Quick and the Dead, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and State of Grace, a Finalist for the National Book Award.

Nonfiction

Yiyun Li, who earned an MS in interdisciplinary studies in 2000, an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2005, and an MFA in English (Nonfiction Writing Program) in 2005, for Things in Nature Merely Grow. Li is the author of several works of fiction, including Wednesday's Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; The Vagrants; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, as well as the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.

Winners of the National Book Award competition, which is administered by the National Book Foundation, will be announced Nov. 19.