This afternoon the National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the 2009 National Book Awards. Find out more on the NBF site, but here are the fiction finalists:
Bonnie Jo Campbell for "American Salvage" from Wayne State University Press
Colum McCann for "Let the Great World Spin from Random House
Daniyal Mueenuddin for "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" from W.W. Norton & Co.
Jayne Anne Phillips for "Lark and Termite" from Alfred A. Knopf
Marcel Theroux for "Far North" from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The nonfiction finalists are:
David M. Carroll for "Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook" from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Sean B. Carroll for "Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species" from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Greg Grandin for "Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" from Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt
Adrienne Mayor for "The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy" from Princeton University Press
T. J. Stiles for "The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt" from Alfred A. Knopf

The rest of the nominees follow after the jump...

Poetry Finalists
Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again, (Viking Penguin)
Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

Young People's Literature Finalist
Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith (Henry Holt and Co.)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)