Past recipients include: William Faulkner (Collected Stories 1951; Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man 1953); Philip Roth (Goodbye Columbus, 1960); Joyce Carol Oates (them 1970); William Styron (Sophie's Choice 1980); John Irving (The World According to Garp 1980); John Updike (Rabbit is Rich 1982); Alice Walker (The Colour Purple 1983); Don DeLillo (White Noise 1985); E Annie Proulx (The Shipping News 1993); Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections 2001); Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones 2011); and Percival Everett (James, 2024)
The Longlists for 2025 are as follows:
The Longlists for 2025 are as follows:
Fiction
- Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
- Susan Choi, Flashlight
- Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness
- Jonas Hassen Khemiri, The Sisters
- Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief
- Kevin Moffett, Only Son
- Karen Russell, The Antidote
- Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther
- Bryan Washington, Palaver
- Joy Williams, The Pelican Child
Non-Fiction
- Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
- Caleb Gayle, Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State
- Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
- Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising
- Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow
- Lana Lin, The Autobiography of H Lan Thao Lam
- Ben Ratliff, Run the Song: Writing about Running about Listening
- Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care
- Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
- Helen Whybrow, The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life
Of all these titles, the one I have heard the most about is Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow about losing her two sons to suicide. She is an award winning writer and I imagine she will make the shortlist, if not win.
Poetry
- Gbenga Adesina, Death Does Not End at the Sea
- Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy
- Cathy Linh Che, Becoming Ghost
- Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth
- Rickey Laurentiis, Death of the First Idea
- Esther Lin, Cold Thief Place
- Natalie Shapero, Stay Dead
- Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things
- Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems
- Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Terror Counter
Translated Literature
- Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) - Translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
- Jazmina Barrera, The Queen of Swords - Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
- Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling -Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
- Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier - Translated from Dutch by David McKay
- Saou Ichikawa, Hunchback - Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton
- Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel - Translated from Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
- Han Kang, We Do Not Part - Translated from Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
- Mohamed Kheir, Sleep Phase - Translated from Arabic by Robin Moger
- Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection - Translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes
- Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger - Translated from French by Natasha Lehrer
Young People's Literature
- María Dolores Águila, A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez
- K Ancrum, The Corruption of Hollis Brown
- Derrick Barnes, The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze
- Mahogany L Browne, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe
- Kyle Lukoff, A World Worth Saving
- Amber McBride, The Leaving Room
- Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story
- Hannah V Sawyerr, Truth Is
- Maria van Lieshout, Song of a Blackbird
- Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin
