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National Book Awards Announce Finalists for 2026
Confirmed
In Short: Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the 2026 National Book Awards, with winners set to be announced at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner in New York City.
Winners in each category will receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and a statue. All finalists will be awarded $1,000 and a bronze medal.
Among the finalists, Camonghne Felix is a three-time finalist for a National Book Award, with her latest book, 'Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom,' which is both a memoir and a call-to-action.
In the Fiction category, debut novelist Morgan Thomas is up for the prize with 'Mad Eden,' a story about a patient navigator at a center providing gender-affirming care.
In Poetry, Claudia Rankine's 'Citizen' and Ocean Vuong's 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous' are among the finalists, with the National Book Foundation praising Smith's poems for their lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic qualities.
Two lifetime achievement awards were also presented, including one to George Saunders for his distinguished contribution to American letters.
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine follows a high school philosophy teacher and his mother in Beirut, as they navigate personal and national disasters.
The National Book Foundation received 1,835 book submissions, including 434 in Fiction, 652 in Nonfiction, 285 in Poetry, 139 in Translated Literature, and 325 in Young People's Literature.
What's confirmed
- The winners will be announced at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner in New York City; winners will each receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and a statue; all finalists will receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.
- Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in all five categories—Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature—for the 2026 National Book Awards.
What's still developing
- Does "the third time's the charm" apply to prestigious literary awards?
- The book's "lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic" poems explore the fullness of living, "Here, Smith’s poems, affixed with her remarkable gift of insight, present a rapturous ode to life. With careful-yet-vaulting movement, these poems traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening revelations of history and disclose the joyous possibilities of the future," the NBF said.
- The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) follows 63-year-old Raja, "beloved high school philosophy teacher and 'the neighborhood homosexual,'" and his mother, who "demands to know every detail of Raja's work life and love life" as they live side-by-side in a tiny Beirut apartment.
- "When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn’t be better," a synopsis states.
- "With a chalkboard strapped to Babak’s back, and a satchel full of textbooks, the siblings set off to find the nomad tribes as they make their yearly trek across the mountains," a synopsis states.
- "It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget."
- "The result is a profound testament to the necessity of poetry — all the careful witness, embodied experience and bristling pleasure that it bestows — and of Smith’s necessary voice."
- "this protean protagonist contemplates one more metamorphosis, which just might save the new world from extinction."
- "On the treacherous journey they meet a Jewish boy, hiding from a Nazi spy. And suddenly, they are all in a race for survival."
- Here are the five books on the shortlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction, along with what critics and authors are saying about them.
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