Here are the finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards

The finalists for this year’s National Book Awards have been announced. Among the 25 nominees are novelists Rabih Alameddine and Megha Majumdar as well as journalists Julia Ioffe and Omar El Akkad, who also writes fiction.

The winners of each category will be announced on Nov. 19 at an event in New York City. Also being honored are two lifetime achievement winners: author and Syracuse University professor George Saunders and author, cultural critic and Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor Roxane Gay.

Nine of this year’s nominees have received previous recognitions from the National Book Foundation, the organization behind the National Book Awards. Alameddine is a previous finalist for his 2014 novel An Unnecessary Woman, while Majumdar was longlisted in 2020 for her debut novel, A Burning. Poet Patricia Smith was a finalist in 2008 for her collection Blood Dazzler.

Danish author Solvej Balle was longlisted for the translated literature prize in 2024, along with her translator Barbara J. Haveland. Authors Kyle Lukoff, Amber McBride and Ibi Zoboi are all previous finalists in the young people’s literature category. Fiction authors Karen Russell and Bryan Washington are previous winners of the organization’s 5 Under 25 honors.

All of this year’s nonfiction finalists are first-time honorees in these prizes.

The ceremony will be streamed on the National Book Awards’ website.

Fiction:

Rabih Alameddine, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief

Karen Russell, The Antidote

Ethan Rutherford, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther

Bryan Washington, Palaver

Nonfiction:

Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy

Yiyun Lii, Things in Nature Merely Grow

Claudia Rowe, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care

Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

Poetry:

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The New Economy

Cathy Linh Che, Becoming Ghost

Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth 

Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems

Translated Literature:

Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III). Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling. Translated by Robin Myers 

Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier. Translated by David McKay

Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel. Translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega

Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger. Translated by Natasha Lehrer 

Young People’s Literature:

Kyle Lukoff, A World Worth Saving

Amber McBride, The Leaving Room 

Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story 

Hannah V. Sawyerr, Truth Is