Book prize nominees announced

Novelist Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke,” a story drawn from the Vietnam War, was nominated Wednesday for the 2007 National Book Award in fiction, along with two first-time novelists and two short story writers.

Essayist Christopher Hitchens was nominated in the nonfiction category for “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” as was Edwidge Danticat’s memoir of the Haitian diaspora, “Brother, I’m Dying,” and Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes,” about the history of the CIA.

Winners will be announced at a Manhattan ceremony Nov. 14. Awards also will be given to novelist and essayist Joan Didion for distinguished contribution to American letters and to Terry Gross, host and executive producer of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” for service to the American literary community.

The complete list of nominees in each category:

Fiction: Mischa Berlinski, “Fieldwork”; Lydia Davis, “Varieties of Disturbance”; Joshua Ferris, “Then We Came to the End”; Denis Johnson, “Tree of Smoke”; Jim Shepard, “Like You’d Understand, Anyway.”

Nonfiction: Edwidge Danticat, “Brother, I’m Dying”; Christopher Hitchens, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”; Woody Holton, “Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution”; Arnold Rampersad, “Ralph Ellison: A Biography”; Tim Weiner, “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.”

Poetry: Linda Gregerson, “Magnetic North”; Robert Hass, “Time and Materials”; David Kirby, “The House on Boulevard St.”; Stanley Plumly, “Old Heart”; Ellen Bryant Voigt, “Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006.”

Young people’s literature: Sherman Alexie, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”; Kathleen Duey, “Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic, Book One”; M. Sindy Felin, “Touching Snow”; Brian Selznick, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret”; Sara Zarr, “Story of a Girl.”

josh.getlin@latimes.com