The hardest part of being nominated for one of the top literary prizes in America? Not being able to tell anyone about it, said Debby Dahl Edwardson.
Edwardson, of Barrow, Alaska, received a phone call Monday morning telling her that her young adult novel, "My Name Is Not Easy," was a finalist for the National Book Award.
"Then they proceeded to tell me not to tell anybody," she said. "I spent the next two days in this high state of nausea."
The announcement was made public Wednesday and word spread rapidly through Alaska's literary community _ and even more rapidly through the Inupiat town of Barrow, the northernmost settlement in the United States.
