We’re excited to announce that several writers familiar to our audiences will be recognized at the upcoming National Book Awards ceremony on Wednesday, November 19.

On Tuesday, the National Book Foundation announced its 2025 finalists, and we extend our warmest congratulations to all. We’re especially excited for Cathy Linh Che, whose poetry collection Becoming Ghost was named a finalist. In September, Cathy joined us for an event with poet and memoirist Gerald McCarthy at the University at Albany. Watch the video of her visit here.

The evening will also feature two prestigious lifetime achievement awards:

• Roxane Gay, acclaimed author and cultural critic, will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. The award will be presented by National Book Award winner and former New York State Author Jacqueline Woodson. Gay was a featured guest at last month’s Albany Book Festival and previously joined us in 2021 alongside her wife, designer Debbie Millman, for a conversation with WAMC’s Joe Donahue. Watch that video here.

  
  

• George Saunders, writer and professor, will be honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Watch an excerpt from his 2013 visit to the Writers Institute.

  
  

We’re proud to note that other past Writers Institute guests have also been recognized as 2025 National Book Award finalists, including Karen Russell (2011) and Ibi Zoboi (2019.)

The Winners of the National Book Award for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature will be announced live on Wednesday, November 19, at the invitation-only 76th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The National Book Foundation will livestream the ceremony for readers everywhere; register to watch on the Foundation’s website at nationalbook.org/awards.

Winners of the National Book Awards receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and statue; Finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal; Winners and finalists in the Translated Literature category will split the prize evenly between author and translator.

Publishers submitted a total of 1,835 books for this year’s National Book Awards: 434 in Fiction, 652 in Nonfiction, 285 in Poetry, 139 in Translated Literature, and 325 in Young People’s Literature.

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 Li, 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 from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell

• Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling

  Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers

• Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier

  Translated from the Dutch by David McKay

• Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel

  Translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega

• Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger

  Translated from the French 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

• Ibi Zoboi, (S)Kin