Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in all five categories—Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature—for the 2026 National Book Awards.
The winners will be announced at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner in New York City; winners will each receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and a statue; all finalists will receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.
Until then, here are the finalists:
FICTION:
Hannah Lillith Assadi, Paradiso 17 (Knopf / Penguin Random House)
Edwidge Danticat, Dèy (Knopf / Penguin Random House)
Julián Delgado Lopera, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You (Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)
Valeria Luiselli, Beginning Middle End (Knopf / Penguin Random House)
Morgan Thomas, Mad Eden (MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
* NONFICTION:
Colin Asher, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music (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)
Sara Nović, Mother Tongue (Random House / Penguin Random House)
Joseph Osmundson, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood (Bloomsbury Publishing)
* POETRY:
Victoria Chang, Tree of Knowledge (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
Carolina Ebeid, Hide (Graywolf Press)
Brenda Hillman, Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation (Wesleyan University Press)
Fady Joudah, Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza (Milkweed Editions)
Susan Stewart, Bramble (University of Chicago Press)
* TRANSLATED LITERATURE:
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The School of Night Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken (Penguin Press / Penguin Random House)
Vicente Luis Mora, Centroeuropa Translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery (Bellevue Literary Press)
Intan Paramaditha, Night of a Thousand Hells Translated from the Indonesian by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao (Europa Editions)
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Pure Men Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud (Other Press)
Samar Yazbek, Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price (Other Press)
* YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE:
Elana K. Arnold, Holloway (Clarion Books / HarperCollins Publishers)
Tae Keller, When Tomorrow Burns (Random House Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)
Keala Kendall, That Which Feeds Us: A Hawaiian Gothic (Random House Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)
David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels, The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America (Knopf Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)
Julian Randall, Shook (Henry Holt and Company (BYR) / Macmillan Publishers)
