National Book Awards 2026: Exile, Gaza and Home

The National Book Foundation named its 25 finalists for the 2026 National Book Awards this month, five each in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature and Young People's Literature. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at the 77th ceremony and benefit dinner in New York, hosted by Kyle MacLachlan. Each winner receives $10,000, a bronze medal and a statue. Each finalist receives $1,000 and a bronze medal.

The Foundation says publishers submitted 1,912 books: 451 in Fiction, 727 in Nonfiction, 285 in Poetry, 159 in Translated Literature and 290 in Young People's Literature. Judges' decisions are made independently of the Foundation's staff and board, and deliberations are confidential. Of the 25 finalists, 14 authors and translators have been honored by the Foundation before.

Fiction: home, lost and rebuilt

The Fiction list is built around displacement. Hannah Lillith Assadi's Paradiso 17, from Knopf, follows Sufien, who tells his life story from his deathbed. He was forced to flee Palestine as a child during the 1948 Nakba, and he spends the rest of his life across countries and decades asking where he belongs. Edwidge Danticat's Dèy, also from Knopf, centers on Magnolia, a Haitian American real estate agent in Miami who struggles to tell her family the truth after surviving a mass shooting. WTOP's report says the book moves among Miami, Haiti and Brooklyn.

Julián Delgado Lopera's Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, from Liveright, is set in 1990s Bogotá. A father and daughter learn to live with each other after the mother's death, against the background of Colombia's queer underground and its violence. Valeria Luiselli's Beginning Middle End, from Knopf, spans continents, languages and four generations, following a mother and daughter who reconstruct their lives after the mother's divorce. Morgan Thomas's debut novel Mad Eden, from MCD, interleaves the story of Ro, a trans healthcare worker recently diagnosed with autism, with excerpts from an online fantasy story of the same name.

Read together, the five books ask who gets to stay put. A critic can quarrel with a shortlist, but this one has a clear spine.

Nonfiction: prisons, languages and parenthood

Colin Asher's The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music, from W. W. Norton, is the finalist with the most direct tie to art. It is a history of American music told through the prison. Abdelrahman ElGendy's Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming comes from Hogarth. Camonghne Felix's Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom is published by One World. Sara Nović's Mother Tongue is from Random House. Joseph Osmundson's Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood is from Bloomsbury.

Poetry: from desert to Gaza

Victoria Chang's Tree of Knowledge is from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Carolina Ebeid's Hide is from Graywolf. Brenda Hillman's Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation is from Wesleyan University Press. Fady Joudah's Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza is from Milkweed Editions, and Susan Stewart's Bramble is from the University of Chicago Press.

Joudah's book is the one that crosses into the news. It joins two other finalists that deal with Gaza or Palestine: Assadi's novel in Fiction and Samar Yazbek's book in Translated Literature.

Translated Literature: five languages

Karl Ove Knausgaard's The School of Night, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is from Penguin Press. Vicente Luis Mora's Centroeuropam, translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery, is from Bellevue Literary Press. Intan Paramaditha's Night of a Thousand Hells, translated from the Indonesian by Stephen J. Epstein and Tiffany Tsao, is from Europa Editions. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's Pure Men, translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud, is from Other Press. Samar Yazbek's Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price, is also from Other Press.

The category lists books from Norwegian, Spanish, Indonesian, French and Arabic, and gives each translator a name on the list. That is the way a translation award should work.

Young People's Literature

Elana K. Arnold's Holloway is from Clarion Books. Tae Keller's When Tomorrow Burns and Keala Kendall's That Which Feeds Us: A Hawaiian Gothic are from Random House Books for Young Readers. David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels wrote The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America for Knopf Books for Young Readers. Julian Randall's Shook is from Henry Holt and Company.

How to read the list

Three of the five Fiction finalists are from Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Two of the five Translated Literature finalists are from Other Press. Those are small facts, but they show how much of the national conversation is shaped by a few houses. Smaller houses are present too: Graywolf, Milkweed, Europa Editions and Other Press all have finalists.

The ceremony is the point at which a shortlist becomes a market event, and a New York audience will see it on Nov. 18. The Foundation also offers a livestream for people who cannot attend. Between now and then, the books are in stores and libraries, and the reading is the better part of the award season.

FAQ

When are the 2026 National Book Award winners announced?

Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026, at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in New York.

How many books were submitted?

1,912, according to the National Book Foundation.

Who are the Fiction finalists?

Hannah Lillith Assadi, Edwidge Danticat, Julián Delgado Lopera, Valeria Luiselli and Morgan Thomas.

How much do winners and finalists receive?

Winners receive $10,000, a bronze medal and a statue. Finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.

Sources

*Cover photo: Library of Congress Life, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20190924SM264_(48794361013).jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20190924SM264_(48794361013).jpg)* (CC0).*