Last week the National Book Foundation announced its "5 Under 35," four of whom were women. Now it's announced the finalists for the prestigious National Book Award — and these include a lot of ladies too.

According to the LA Times, four of the five finalists in fiction are women. They are by Julie Otsuka (The Buddha in the Attic), Edith Pearlman (Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories), Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones), and Tea Obreht, whose debut novel The Tiger's Wife made a big splash earlier this year. Ladies also dominated the nonfiction category — three out of five finalists were female. One is the awesome Lauren Redniss, whose beautiful Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout we wrote about last year. Congratulations, ladies!

National Book Award Finalists Announced — With An Extra Title [LA Times]