The 2025 National Book Awards Longlist

This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2025 National Book Awards, including Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. Check back through Friday as more honorees are named, and sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the longlists in your inbox.

Young People’s Literature

This year’s longlist includes works of fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, and novels in verse. Several of the titles contend with grief and loss among young people; a few, such as Kyle Lukoff’s “A World Worth Saving” and Mahogany L. Browne’s “A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe,” wrestle with the ruptures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four of the authors on the longlist—Derrick Barnes, Kyle Lukoff, Amber McBride, and Ibi Zoboi—have been finalists in the category before.

María Dolores Águila, “A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez”
Roaring Brook / Macmillan

K. Ancrum, “The Corruption of Hollis Brown”
HarperCollins

Derrick Barnes, “The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze”
Viking / Penguin Random House

Mahogany L. Browne, “A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe”
Crown / Penguin Random House

Kyle Lukoff, “A World Worth Saving”
Dial / Penguin Random House

Amber McBride, “The Leaving Room”
Feiwel & Friends / Macmillan

Daniel Nayeri, “The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story”
Levine Querido

Hannah V. Sawyerr, “Truth Is”
Amulet / Abrams

Maria van Lieshout, “Song of a Blackbird”
First Second / Macmillan

Ibi Zoboi, “(S)Kin”
Versify / HarperCollins

The judges for the category this year are Cathy Berner, a bookseller at Blue Willow Bookshop and a former school librarian; David Bowles, a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the author of dozens of books, including “My Two Border Towns”; the young-adult author candice iloh, whose book “Every Body Looking” was a 2020 National Book Award finalist; Jung Kim, a professor of education at Lewis University; and the actor Maulik Pancholy, best known for his roles as Jonathan on “30 Rock” and Baljeet on “Phineas and Ferb.”

For more information about the 76th National Book Awards and to register to watch the winners announced live, please visit nationalbook.org/awards.