If you haven’t heard already, The National Book Award Finalists in Fiction were announced today. And here they are:

Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

James McBride, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA)

Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press/Penguin Group USA)

George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House)

There really is a moment happening for short story writers. George Saunders, NBA Finalist; Alice Munro, Nobel Prize Winner; Karen Russell, MacArthur Fellow. Hail to the short story!

We loved The Flamethrowers. Kushner has our vote!