Novelist Gayl Jones is among National Book Award finalists

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Novelist Gayl Jones is a fiction nominee for the National Book Award, the rare established name on a list of 10 that features eight debut works of fiction. Jones was cited Friday for “The Birdcatcher,” an exploration of race, art and marriage in which a Black American writer journeys to the island of Ibiza and stays with her married friends, one of whom is trying to kill the other. Besides Jones, Jamil Jan Kochai is the only nominee who had previously published fiction. He was cited Friday for the collection “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories.”