Year-End Lists

National Book Award: Nonfiction 2026

Winner

• TBA November 18

Finalists

• The Midnight Special

  The Secret Prison History of American Music
  Colin Asher
• Huna

  A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming
  Abdelrahman ElGendy
• Let the Poets Govern

  A Declaration of Freedom
  Camonghne Felix
• Mother Tongue

  A Memoir
  Sara Nović
• Spawning Season

  An Experiment in Queer Parenthood
  Joseph Osmundson

Longlist

• Seasons of Fury

  Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
  Rozina Ali
• Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young

  A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
  Zayd Ayers Dohrn
• The War Within a War

  The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
  Wil Haygood
• The Evolution of Fire

  Essays on Crisis and Becoming
  Angela Pelster
• A Dead White

  An Argument Against White Paint
  Wendy S. Walters