Here are all the contenders for the 2025 National Book Awards
The National Book Foundation will award prizes to the best works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people's literature this year.
Images: Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan Publishers; Knopf/Penguin Random House; Scribner/Simon & Schuster
If you’re looking to cozy up with a juicy new read this fall, the National Book Foundation has just the list (or lists) for you. This week, the foundation has been rolling out its longlists for the 2025 National Book Awards, which aim, per their mission statement, to “celebrate the best literature published in the United States, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture.” Each year, the foundation hands out prizes to the best works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature, as determined by juries of esteemed authors, many of whom have either won or been nominated for National Book Awards themselves.
The foundation unveiled the fiction longlist, its final set of nominees, today. (The others were announced earlier this week.) It includes 10 total works, selected from a pool of 434. Of the selected titles, two—Kevin Moffett’s Only Son and Ethan Rutherford’s North Sun: Or, The Voyage Of The Whaleship Esther—are debut novels. The list also includes one short story collection, Joy Williams’ The Pelican Child. Eight of the nominated authors have been honored in years past, including Susan Choi, who won in 2019 for Trust Exercise. (She’s back in the mix this year with Flashlight, a study of parental loss.)
You can read detailed descriptions of the nominated works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature at their respective links. Check out the full longlists below:
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
