If They Gave Oscars To Books, Our 2016 Nominees

What would happen if the Academy gave Oscars to the book world? Okay, it would be the National Book Awards. But what if it was even bigger than that? Since the Academy Awards air this weekend, here’s a fun and diverting game to play at whatever party you get dragged to: what would the categories look like if they applied to books and not films? Sure, best picture makes an easy parallel, but what about sound editing? Hairstyling? Cinematography? Our nominations for the imaginary 2017 Literary Oscars are below, or go ahead and make up your own. NB: Just like the actual Oscars, all of these categories leave off a host of worthy contenders—but lists are finite and so are all of our attention spans. Feel free to add on ad infinitum in the comments.

Best Novel (Best Picture)
*
What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The Vegetarian, Han Kang (Hogarth)
The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee (HMH)
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
The Angel of History, Rabih Alameddine (Grove Atlantic)
The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Mahajan (Viking)
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (Knopf)

Male Literary Citizen (Actor in a Leading Role)
*
David Remnick, Editor of The New Yorker
Rob Spillman, Editor of Tin House
Paul Beatty, Author, First American to Win the Booker Prize
Saeed Jones, Executive Culture Editor at BuzzFeed
Bob Dylan, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Female Literary Citizen (Actress in a Leading Role)
*
Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation
Pamela Paul, Editor of The New York Times Book Review
Roxane Gay, Writer, Editor, Professor
Lauren Naturale, Merriam-Webster Social Media Manager
Carla D. Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress
Claudia Rankine, Poet and 2016 MacArthur Foundation Fellow
Penina Roth, Curator of the Franklin Park Reading Series & co-curator of Manhattanville Reading Series

Debut by a Male Author (Actor in a Supporting Role)
*
The Mirror Thief, Martin Seay (Melville House)
What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The Story of a Brief Marriage, Anuk Arudpragasam (Flatiron Books)
Private Citizens, Tony Tulathimutte (William Morrow)
The Nix, Nathan Hill (Knopf)

Debut by a Female Author (Actress in a Supporting Role)
*
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi (Knopf)
Ways to Disappear, Idra Novey (Little, Brown)
The Wangs vs. The World, Jade Chang (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue (Random House)
Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett (Riverhead)
Problems, Jade Sharma (Emily Books)

Best YA Novel (Animated Feature Film)
*
The Serpent King, Jeff Zentner (Crown)
The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic Press)
If I Was Your Girl, Meredith Russo (Flatiron)
Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys (Philomel)
A Study in Charlotte, Brittany Cavallaro (Katherine Tegen Books)
The Sun Is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon (Delacorte)

Best Setting (Cinematography)
*
Magulu, The Gloaming, Melanie Finn (Two Dollar Radio)
The Stillness, The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Montego Bay, Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn (Liveright)
The cult compound, The Girls, Emma Cline (Random House)
The Paris Opera House, The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Best Book Jacket Design (Costume Design)
*
Na Kim, for Cannibals in Love by Mike Rogers (FSG Originals)
Janet Hansen for The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff (Vintage)
Rachel Willey for The Mothers
Peter Mendlesund, for the W.G. Sebald backlist redesigns (New Directions)
Kelly Blair, for How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball (Pantheon)

Best Editors (Directing)
*
Oh, you know who you are.

Best Work of Nonfiction (Documentary–Feature)
*
White Trash: The 400-Year Old Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg (Viking)
The Lonely City, Olivia Laing (Picador)
In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi (Metropolitan Books)
Evicted, Matthew Desmond (Crown)
Lab Girl, Hope Jahren (Vintage)

Best Essay Collection (Documentary–Short Subject)
*
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, Siri Hustvedt (Simon & Schuster)
Future Sex, Emily Witt (FSG)
Against Everything, Mark Greif (Pantheon)
The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
Unforbidden Pleasures, Adam Phillips (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Best Work of Experimental Literature (Film Editing)
*
Float, Anne Carson (Knopf)
Sudden Death, Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead)
So Much For That Winter, Dorthe Nors, trans. Misha Hoekstra (Graywolf)
Margaret the First, Danielle Dutton (Catapult)
Bruja, Wendy C. Ortiz (Civil Coping Mechanisms)
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter (Graywolf)

Best Book in Translation (Foreign Language Film)

*
The Queue, Basma Abdel Aziz, trans. Elisabeth Jaquette (Melville House)
Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Yoko Tawada, trans. Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)
Sudden Death, Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead)
So Much For That Winter, Dorthe Nors, trans. Misha Hoekstra (Graywolf)
The Vegetarian, Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith (Hogarth)

Coolest Publicity Squad (Production Design)
*
Riverhead
Melville House
Kima Jones
Harper Perennial
Broadside PR
Instagram

Best Picture Book (Short Film–Animated)
*
Thunder Boy Jr., Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Little, Brown)
We Found a Hat, Jon Klassen (Candlewick)
They All Saw a Cat, Brendan Wenzel (Chronicle)
Du Iz Tak, Carson Ellis (Candlewick)
Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Javaka Steptoe (Little, Brown)

Best Book of Short Stories (Short Film–Live Action)
*
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead)
When Watched, Leopoldine Core (Penguin Books)
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?, Kathleen Collins (Ecco)
Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Joy Williams (Tin House)
Insurrections, Rion Amilcar Scott (The University Press of Kentucky)

Best Comic/Graphic Novel (Visual Effects)
*
March: Book Three, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions)
Paper Girls, Vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang (Image)
Mooncop, Tom Gauld (Drawn and Quarterly)
Megg & Mogg in Amsterdam, Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics)
Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Book 1, by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze (Marvel)
Patience, Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics)

Best Work of Fantasy/SF (Makeup and Hairstyling*)
*
All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor)
The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
The Devourers, Indra Das (Del Rey)
The Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu (Saga Press)
Infomocracy, Malka Older (Tor)

*I recognize that this is a stretch

Best Book of Poetry (Sound Editing & Sound Mixing)
*
Cannibal, Safiya Sinclair (University of Nebraska Press)
IRL, Tommy Pico (Birds LLC.)
Four Reincarnations, Max Ritvo (Milkweed Editions)
Look, Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf)
Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong (Copper Canyon)