The 2026 National Book Awards Longlist

The New Yorker presents the longlists for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, and Nonfiction.

September 16, 2026

Illustrations by Millie von Platen

This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2026 National Book Awards, including Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. To receive book recommendations from our writers and editors, plus short reviews of recent releases, sign up for our new What We’re Reading newsletter.

In March, The New Yorker published an excerpt from “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young,” Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s memoir of growing up in the Weather Underground. “I’ve spent years trying to untangle what I admire about my mother and father—their sacrifice and commitment, their radical solidarity with the Black freedom movement—from the violence and factionalism that often undermined their cause,” Dohrn writes of his parents, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who helped found the militant left-wing group during the Vietnam War. In “Seasons of Fury,” which The New Yorker excerpted in August, Rozina Ali considers a different political era, examining the post-9/11 expansion of the security state through the stories of four Muslim American families. Nine of the ten authors on the longlist are being honored by the National Book Awards for the first time; one nominee, Camonghne Felix, was long-listed for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2019.

Abdelrahman ElGendy, “Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming”
Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Camonghne Felix, “Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom”
One World / Penguin Random House

Sara Nović, “Mother Tongue”
Random House / Penguin Random House

Wendy S. Walters, “A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint”
Scribner / Simon & Schuster

The judges for the category this year are Eve L. Ewing, the author of “Original Sins”; Audrey I-Wei Huang, a bookseller at Belmont Books, in Belmont, Massachusetts; Jonathan C. Slaght, whose book “Owls of the Eastern Ice” was long-listed for a National Book Award in 2020; Robert Warrior (Chair), whose books include “Like a Hurricane”; and Lidia Yuknavitch, the author of “The Chronology of Water.”

“Mourning / for America won’t end,” Brenda Hillman writes in “1970,” a poem from her recent collection, “Still House in the Desert,” a meditation on impermanence and ecological loss. That poem, and another one from the collection, “The Carbon Atoms of Saved Things,” was published in The New Yorker earlier this year. “Still House in the Desert” is one of several books on the longlist that contemplate the fragility of the natural world. Four of the ten nominees—Victoria Chang, Fady Joudah, Layli Long Soldier, and Hillman—have been previously recognized by the National Book Awards.

Victoria Chang, “Tree of Knowledge”
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Carolina Ebeid, “Hide”
Graywolf Press

Richie Hofmann, “The Bronze Arms”
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Layli Long Soldier, “We”
Graywolf Press

Jonah Mixon-Webster, “Promise/Threat”
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Jake Rose, “JOAN”
University of Chicago Press

Jake Skeets, “Horses”
Milkweed Editions

Susan Stewart, “Bramble”
University of Chicago Press

The judges for the category this year are Rob Arnold, a poet and executive director of Poets House; Aracelis Girmay (Chair), the author of “Green of All Heads”; Jon Pineda, the author of “Let’s No One Get Hurt” and “Little Anodynes”; Roger Reeves, the author of “Best Barbarian,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022; and Rosanna Warren, the author of “Hindsight” and “So Forth.”

“The School of Night” is the fourth volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “Morning Star” series, which the author began writing during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The novels rifle through the history of thought and culture, tracing the paths existential unknowns have carved,” Joshua Rothman wrote in a column, considering the series in January. “The School of Night,” translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is one of ten titles on this year’s longlist. The books on the list originally appeared in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish. Intan Paramaditha’s “Night of a Thousand Hells,” about a young woman who carries out a suicide bombing and that act’s effect on her family, is the first Indonesian translation to be honored by the National Book Awards.

Egana Djabbarova, “My Dreadful Body”
Translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
New Vessel Press

Álvaro Enrigue, “Now I Surrender”
Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Karim Kattan, “Eden at Dawn”
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Restless Books

Karl Ove Knausgaard, “The School of Night”
Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken
Penguin Press / Penguin Random House

Ping Lu, “To the East of the East”
Translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
World Editions

Vicente Luis Mora, “Centroeuropa”
Translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery
Bellevue Literary Press

Intan Paramaditha, “Night of a Thousand Hells”
Translated from the Indonesian by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao
Europa Editions

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, “Pure Men”
Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud
Other Press

Maria Stepanova, “The Disappearing Act”
Translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale
New Directions Publishing

The judges for the category this year are Shelley Fairweather-Vega, whose translation of Hamid Ismailov’s “We Computers” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2025; Javier García del Moral, the founder of the Wild Detectives, a bookstore and bar in Dallas, Texas; John Keene, whose book “Punks” won the National Book Award in Poetry in 2022; Christopher Merrill (Chair), a former director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the author of “On the Road to Lviv” and “Flares”; and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, who received a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” award for her first novel, “Fra Keeler,” in 2012.

This year’s longlist includes fiction, nonfiction, novels in verse, and one picture book. Several titles on this year’s list explore the power of art and the written word; others feature supernatural encounters or voyages through space and time. Two of the authors on the longlist—Elana K. Arnold and David Levithan—have been nominated for the award before.

Delali Adjoa, “The Free Verse Society”
Peachtree Teen / Peachtree Publishing

Elana K. Arnold, “Holloway”
Clarion Books / HarperCollins Publishers

T. A. Chan, “The Celestial Seas”
Viking Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Tae Keller, “When Tomorrow Burns”
Random House Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Keala Kendall, “That Which Feeds Us: A Hawaiian Gothic”
Random House Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels, “The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America”
Knopf Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Chanel Miller, “The Moon Without Stars”
Philomel Books / Penguin Random House

Eric Darnell Pritchard, “Clothes to Make You Smile: Patrick Kelly Designs His Dreams”
Abrams Books for Young Readers / Abrams

Julian Randall, “Shook”
Henry Holt and Company (BYR) / Macmillan Publishers

Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr, “Life on the Moon”
Knopf Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

The judges for the category this year are Edith Campbell, a founder of the We Are Kid Lit Collective; Brandy Colbert (Chair), the author of “Black Birds in the Sky”; Tricia Ebarvia, a co-founder of the Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy; Jarrett J. Krosoczka, whose graphic memoir “Hey, Kiddo” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018; and Anne Ursu, whose novel “The Real Boy” was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2013.

For more information about the 77th National Book Awards and to register to watch the winners announced live, please visit nationalbook.org/awards. ♦

• Parents disagreed on whether to vaccinate their children. Then the kids got sick.

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