The National Book Foundation has unveiled the 2026 longlist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. From a field of 727 works submitted by publishers, ten titles earned a place on the list. The nonfiction panel for this year includes Eve L. Ewing, Audrey I-Wei Huang, Jonathan C. Slaght, Robert Warrior (Chair), and Lidia Yuknavitch.
Finalists across every category are set to be announced on Tuesday, October 6, with the winners announced at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 18.
For now, the 2026 Nonfiction longlist is as follows:
Rozina Ali, Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America, Crown / Penguin Random House
Colin Asher, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music, W. W. Norton & Company
Zayd Ayers Dohrn, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground, W. W. Norton & Company
Abdelrahman ElGendy, Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming, Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Camonghne Felix, Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom, One World / Penguin Random House
Wil Haygood, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home, Knopf / Penguin Random House
Sara Nović, Mother Tongue, Random House / Penguin Random House
Joseph Osmundson, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood, Bloomsbury Publishing
Angela Pelster, The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming, Milkweed Editions
Wendy S. Walters, A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint, Scribner / Simon & Schuster
