The National Book Foundation has narrowed the race for its 2026 fiction prize to ten novels, headlined by Louise Erdrich's "Python's Kiss," Edwidge Danticat's "Dèy" and Marlon James' "The Disappearers," chosen from a pool of 451 books submitted by publishers. The longlist, posted this month, is the foundation's first public step toward the 77th edition of one of American publishing's oldest and most closely watched prizes.
Rounding out the fiction longlist are Hannah Lillith Assadi's "Paradiso 17," Kimberly Blaeser's "Red Ants," Julián Delgado Lopera's "Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You," Valeria Luiselli's "Beginning Middle End," Alexander Maksik's "Passengers," Kenan Orhan's "The Renovation" and Morgan Thomas' "Mad Eden." A panel chaired by Caro De Robertis, with fellow judges Matt Bell, Danielle King, Akhil Sharma and Diane Wilson, made the selections.
Nonfiction's Deep Bench
The nonfiction longlist, drawn from 727 submissions, includes Wil Haygood's "The War Within a War," on Black Americans' experience of the Vietnam War era; Rozina Ali's "Seasons of Fury," on the rise of Islamophobia in America; and Colin Asher's "The Midnight Special." Also named were Zayd Ayers Dohrn's "Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young," Abdelrahman ElGendy's "Huna," Camonghne Felix's "Let the Poets Govern," Sara Nović's "Mother Tongue," Joseph Osmundson's "Spawning Season," Angela Pelster's "The Evolution of Fire" and Wendy S. Walters' "A Dead White." That panel is chaired by Robert Warrior, with judges Eve L. Ewing, Audrey I-Wei Huang, Jonathan C. Slaght and Lidia Yuknavitch.
The foundation released longlists in all five of its categories this month — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people's literature — each trimmed from hundreds of publisher submissions by a rotating panel of writers, critics, booksellers and librarians. The lists are the foundation's broadest public gesture of the award cycle, giving readers a far wider field to sample from than the five finalists per category that eventually make the official shortlists.
For publishers, a longlist nod is already a marketing asset: past National Book Award recognition has reliably driven a sales bump regardless of whether a title goes on to win, and this year's fiction and nonfiction lists mix celebrated veterans with writers appearing in the competition for the first time.
Each category's list will be cut to five finalists on Oct. 6, with winners revealed at the 77th National Book Awards ceremony on Nov. 18 in New York. Finalists receive $1,000 each; the five category winners take home $10,000 and a bronze sculpture apiece.