The 2025 National Book Awards Longlist
The judges for the category this year are Kate Daniels, author of the recent poetry collection “In the Months of My Son’s Recovery”; Terrance Hayes, whose collection “Lighthead” won the 2010 National Book Award; H. Melt, author of “There Are Trans People Here”; Anis Mojgani, who recently served as Oregon’s tenth poet laureate; and Caridad Moro-Gronlier, author of “Tortillera.”
Translated Literature
In March, Alice Gregory reviewed Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection”—an Italian-language novel about the beautiful, aimless life of an expat millennial couple in Berlin, which reimagines Georges Perec’s début “Things: A Story of the Sixties” (1965) in the twenty-tens. “Perfection,” translated into English by Sophie Hughes, is one of ten titles on this year’s longlist. The books on the list originally appeared in nine languages: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Uzbek. Hamid Ismailov’s “We Computers: A Ghazal Novel,” about a French poet who devises an A.I. program to replicate Persian poetry, is the first Uzbek translation to be honored by the National Book Awards.
The judges for the category this year are Stesha Brandon, the literature and humanities program manager at the Seattle Public Library; Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, a professor of Hispanic studies at Oberlin College and the author of several books, including the novel “Los días hábiles”; Bill Johnston, a translator of Polish and French literature whose rendition of Adam Mickiewicz’s “Pan Tadeusz” won the 2019 National Translation Award in Poetry; Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, a professor of Romance studies at Duke University; and Karen Tei Yamashita, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of ten books, including the novel “I Hotel.”
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.
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 and award-winning author 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.
