The longlist for the 2026 National Book Awards has been announced. These annual American literary awards have been presented since 1936. Each finalist received $1000, a medal and a citation, while the winners get $10,000 and a bronze sculpture.
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 2026 are:
The Longlists for 2026 are:
Fiction
- Hannah Lilith Assadi, Paradiso 17
- Kimberly Blaeser, Red Ants
- Edwidge Danticat, Dey
- Julian Delgado Lopera, Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You
- Louise Edrich, Python's Kiss
- Marlon James, The Disappearers
- Valeria Luiselli, Beginning Middle End
- Alexander Maksik, Passengers
- Kenan Orhan, The Renovation
- Morgan Thomas, Mad Eden
Non-Fiction
- Rozina Ali, Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
- Colin Asher, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music
- Zayd Ayers Dohrn, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
- Abdelrahman ElGendy, Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming
- Campghne Felix, Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom
- Wil Haygood, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
- Sara Novic, Mother Tongue
- Joseph Osmundson, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood
- Angela Pelster, The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming
- Wendy S Walters, A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint
Poetry
- Victoria Chang, Tree of Knowledge
- Carolina Ebeid, Hide
- Brenda Hillman, Still House in the Desert
- Richie Hofmann, The Bronze Arms
- Fady Joudah, Exhibit G: Poems, Essays and Photographs of Gaza
- Layli Long Soldier, We
- Johan Mixon-Webster, Promise/Threat
- Jake Rose, Joan
- Jake Skeets, Horses
- Susan Stewart, Bramble
Translated Literature
- Egana Djabbarova, My Dreadful Body - Translated from Russian by Lisa C Hayden
- Alvaro Enrigue, Now I Surrender- Translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
- Karim Kattan, Eden at Dawn -Translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, The School of Night - Translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken
- Ping Lu, To The East of the East - Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
- Vicente Luis Mora, Centroeuropa - Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery
- Intan Parmaditha, Night of a Thousand Hells - Translated from Indonesian by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao
- Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Pure Men - Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud
- Maria Stepanova, The Disappearing Act - Translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale
- Samar Yazbek, Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza - Translated from Arabic by Leri Price
Young People's Literature
- Delali Adjoa, The Free Verse Society
- Elena K Arnold, Holloway
- T A Chan, The Celestial Seas
- Tae Keller, When Tomorrow Burns
- Keala Kendall, That Which Feeds Us
- David Leviathan, Gabriel Duckels, TheFight of Our Lives: AIDS in America
- Chanel Miller, The Moon Without Stars
- Eric Darnell Pritchard, Shannon Wright, Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams
- Julian Randall, Shook
- Matthew Swandson, Robbi Behr, Life on the Moon
