- Fiction
- The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (Winner!)
- Only Revolutions: A Novel, by Mark Z. Danielewski
- A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, by Ken Kalfus
- Eat The Document: A Novel, by Dana Spiotta
- The Zero, by Jess Walter
- Nonfiction
- The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan (Winner!)
- At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, by Taylor Branch
- Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
- Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, by Peter Hessler
- The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright
- Poetry
- Splay Anthem, by Nathaniel Mackey (Winner!)
- Averno, by Louise Gluck
- Chromatic, by H.L. Hix
- Angle of Yaw, by Ben Lerner
- Capacity, by James McMichael