The National Book Foundation has released its longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Fiction, naming ten novels selected from 451 books submitted by publishers this year. The list includes Louise Erdrich's Python's Kiss and Marlon James's The Disappearers alongside newer names in literary fiction, part of a five-category longlist season that also covers nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people's literature.
The full fiction longlist: Hannah Lillith Assadi's Paradiso 17, Kimberly Blaeser's Red Ants, Edwidge Danticat's Dèy, Julián Delgado Lopera's Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You, Louise Erdrich's Python's Kiss, Marlon James's The Disappearers, Valeria Luiselli's Beginning Middle End, Alexander Maksik's Passengers, Kenan Orhan's The Renovation and Morgan Thomas's Mad Eden. This year's fiction judging panel is chaired by Caro De Robertis, with Matt Bell, Danielle King, Akhil Sharma and Diane Wilson.
The National Book Foundation's announcement caps a longlist rollout across all five categories this week; Publishers Weekly's rundown noted the nonfiction list leans heavily on history and memoir, with titles on Islamophobia in America, the history of American prisons and Black service in the Vietnam War, from publishers including Crown, Norton, Knopf and Random House.
Erdrich, a past National Book Award winner for fiction (2012's The Round House), returns with a collection blending human and nonhuman narrators; James, a Booker Prize winner for A Brief History of Seven Killings, is longlisted for a novel Literary Hub describes as a queer epic. The list also pulls in first-time longlist contenders writing on migration and inheritance, including Assadi's novel of a Palestinian journey to find home and Delgado Lopera's queer, diaspora-inflected narrative.
The longlist announcement is traditionally the quietest step in the prize calendar, drawing attention mainly from booksellers and literary press rather than a public ceremony. That changes next month: the field narrows to five finalists per category on October 6, ahead of the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in New York on November 18, where the fiction winner will be announced alongside honorees in the other four categories.
None of the ten longlisted authors have publicly commented on their nomination as of Friday. Independent booksellers frequently use the fiction longlist to build September and October window displays, giving lesser-known titles on the list a sales bump before the finalist announcement narrows the field.
