The National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2026 National Book Awards. Winners in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young peoples literature will be revealed at an awards ceremony on November 18.
Finalists by category
Fiction
- Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi (Knopf)
- D e8y by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
- Pretend You re Dead and I Carry You by Juli e1n Delgado Lopera (Liveright)
- Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli (Knopf)
- Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas (MCD)
Nonfiction
- The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music by Colin Asher (Norton)
- Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming by Abdelrahman ElGendy (Hogarth)
- Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom by Camonghne Felix (One World)
- Mother Tongue by Sara Novi07 (Random House)
- Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood by Joseph Osmundson (Bloomsbury)
Poetry
- Tree of Knowledge by Victoria Chang (FSG)
- Hide by Carolina Ebeid (Graywolf)
- Still House in the Desert: An Eco-Contemplation by Brenda Hillman (Wesleyan)
- Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza by Fady Joudah (Milkweed)
- Bramble by Susan Stewart (University of Chicago)
Translated Literature
- The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken (Penguin Press)
- Centroeuropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery (Bellevue)
- Night of a Thousand Hells by Intan Paramaditha, translated from the Indonesian by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao (Europa)
- Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud (Other Press)
- Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza by Samar Yazbek, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price (Other Press)
Young People 19s Literature
- Holloway by Elana K. Arnold (Clarion)
- When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller (Random House)
- That Which Feeds Us: A Hawaiian Gothic by Keala Kendall (Random House)
- The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America by David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels (Knopf)
- Shook by Julian Randall, illus. by Nathan Walker (Macmillan/Holt)
The announcement spans a wide range of publishers and, in translated literature, acknowledges the work of translators alongside authors and source languages. The winners in each category will be announced on November 18.
