This year’s judges of the National Book Award seem to agree that women’s nonfiction writing is abundant and prize-worthy. The 2015 nonfiction longlist includes seven female-authored books, out of 10, the largest percentage of female nominees in the prize’s history. The longlist also contains two books by people of color, compared to last year’s one. What is even more interesting than the numbers, however, is the types of books on the list.
Over at The Millions, Anne Boyd Rioux considers the authors and the genre of this year’s National Book Award nonfiction longlist in relation to the previous ones—spoiler: there are more women, more writers of color, and more memoirs.
