The 77th National Book Awards will be announced on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 8 p.m. Eastern (5 p.m. Pacific), and anyone can watch for free. The ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York is invitation-only, but the National Book Foundation streams it on its website and YouTube, and registering on the foundation's site gets you the link.
Kyle MacLachlan hosts the evening, with music from Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. Comedian Jo Firestone runs the YouTube live chat.
Each of the five winners takes home $10,000 along with a bronze medal and statue, and the other finalists get $1,000 and a medal. In Translated Literature, the author and translator split the prize.
The 25 finalists
Judges picked five finalists in each category from 1,912 books that publishers submitted this year, the foundation says. Here is the full list from the finalists announcement:
| Category | Author | Book |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction | Hannah Lillith Assadi | Paradiso 17 |
| Fiction | Edwidge Danticat | Dèy |
| Fiction | Julián Delgado Lopera | Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You |
| Fiction | Valeria Luiselli | Beginning Middle End |
| Fiction | Morgan Thomas | Mad Eden |
| Nonfiction | Colin Asher | The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music |
| Nonfiction | Abdelrahman ElGendy | Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming |
| Nonfiction | Camonghne Felix | Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom |
| Nonfiction | Sara Nović | Mother Tongue |
| Nonfiction | Joseph Osmundson | Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood |
| Poetry | Victoria Chang | Tree of Knowledge |
| Poetry | Carolina Ebeid | Hide |
| Poetry | Brenda Hillman | Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation |
| Poetry | Fady Joudah | Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza |
| Poetry | Susan Stewart | Bramble |
| Translated Literature | Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken | The School of Night |
| Translated Literature | Vicente Luis Mora, translated by Rahul Bery | Centroeuropa |
| Translated Literature | Intan Paramaditha, translated by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao | Night of a Thousand Hells |
| Translated Literature | Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated by Lara Vergnaud | Pure Men |
| Translated Literature | Samar Yazbek, translated by Leri Price | Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza |
| Young People's Literature | Elana K. Arnold | Holloway |
| Young People's Literature | Tae Keller | When Tomorrow Burns |
| Young People's Literature | Keala Kendall | That Which Feeds Us: A Hawaiian Gothic |
| Young People's Literature | David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels | The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America |
| Young People's Literature | Julian Randall | Shook |
Fourteen of the authors and translators have been honored by the foundation before. Edwidge Danticat was a fiction finalist in 1995 and a nonfiction finalist in 2007, and Fady Joudah was a poetry finalist in 2024. Translator Leri Price has been a finalist three times before, twice with Samar Yazbek.
The foundation also posts a printable ballot on its awards page for anyone who wants to pick winners before they're named.
Salman Rushdie and Perri Klass get lifetime awards
The ceremony also includes two lifetime awards. Salman Rushdie receives the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, presented by novelist Kiran Desai. Rushdie has written 15 novels, including Midnight's Children, which won the 1981 Booker Prize, and his memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was a nonfiction finalist in 2024.
Perri Klass, a pediatrician and author who has long served as national medical director of the literacy group Reach Out and Read, receives the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Jason Reynolds, a two-time finalist, presents it.
Free readings the day before
The finalists read from their books on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m. Eastern at NYU Skirball in New York, hosted by Traci Thomas of the podcast The Stacks. In-person tickets cost $0 to $10 on the NYU Skirball event page, doors open at 6:30, and the reading also streams free for anyone who registers.
That morning, the five Young People's Literature finalists read for New York City middle and high schoolers at Symphony Space. Actor and author Maulik Pancholy hosts. Teachers and school librarians anywhere can sign up on the foundation's Teens Read page to stream it free.
