Video by Kevin Kino
Twenty of the 2013 finalists read on the night before the awards ceremony, along with Anthony Marra, winner of the John Leonard prize. Following Marra, readers included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alice McDermott, Ruth Ozeki, Frank Bidart, Lucie Brock-Broido, Denise Duhamel, Carmen Giménez Smith, Hilton Als, Aleksandar Hemon, Rebecca Solnit, Amy Wilentz, Scott Anderson, Leo Damrosch, Linda Leavell, Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, Sheri Fink, David Finkel, George Packer, and Lawrence Wright.