The National Book Foundation named 25 finalists across five categories for the 2026 National Book Awards on Tuesday, teeing up a November ceremony that will crown winners in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people's literature.
Edwidge Danticat earned her third career fiction finalist nod, for "Dèy," joining Hannah Lillith Assadi ("Paradiso 17"), Julián Delgado Lopera ("Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You"), Valeria Luiselli ("Beginning Middle End") and debut novelist Morgan Thomas ("Mad Eden") on the fiction shortlist, according to the National Book Foundation.
The nonfiction finalists are Colin Asher's "The Midnight Special," Abdelrahman ElGendy's "Huna," Camonghne Felix's "Let the Poets Govern," Sara Nović's "Mother Tongue" and Joseph Osmundson's "Spawning Season." The poetry category includes Victoria Chang's "Tree of Knowledge," Carolina Ebeid's "Hide," Brenda Hillman's "Still House in the Desert," Fady Joudah's "Exhibit G" and Susan Stewart's "Bramble."
A Translated Fiction Field Shaped by Conflict
The translated literature finalists include Karl Ove Knausgaard's "The School of Night," translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken, alongside two books translated from languages tied to current conflicts: Samar Yazbek's "Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life," an account of survival and witness in Gaza translated from Arabic by Leri Price, and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's "Pure Men," translated from French by Lara Vergnaud. Vicente Luis Mora's "Centroeuropa" and Intan Paramaditha's "Night of a Thousand Hells" round out the category. Fady Joudah's poetry collection "Exhibit G," subtitled a record of poems, essays and photographs of Gaza, gives the wider shortlist a second entry grappling directly with that war.
Young people's literature finalists are Elana K. Arnold's "Holloway," Tae Keller's "When Tomorrow Burns," Keala Kendall's "That Which Feeds Us," David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels' "The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America" and Julian Randall's "Shook."
Each category's winner will be announced at the 77th National Book Awards ceremony on Nov. 18 in New York, where every finalist is honored regardless of outcome. For Danticat, a three-time finalist whose past nominations span decades of Haitian American literary work, the recognition adds to a body of work that has repeatedly placed immigrant and diaspora stories at the center of the American literary conversation.
