1. Heather Ann Thompson, "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Aftermath" (Pantheon Books)
2. Colson Whitehead, "Underground Railroad" (Doubleday)
3. Tommy Pico, "IRL" (Birds, LLC)
4. Masha Gessen, "Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region" (Random House)
5. Jace Clayton, "Uproot: Travels In 21st Century Music and Digital Culture" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
6. Teju Cole, "Known and Strange Things" (Random House)
7. Ben Lerner, "The Hatred of Poetry" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
8. Jacqueline Woodson, "Another Brooklyn" (HarperCollins)
9. Larissa Pham, "Fantasian" (Badlands Unlimited)
10. Lezley McSpadden, "Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown" (Regan Arts)