The 20 finalists for the 2023 National Book Award were announced today. Winners will be selected from the five categories -fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature.
The winners will be announced during an award ceremony on November 15 by guests such as Oprah Winfrey, Rita Dove, and Paul Yamazaki. All finalists selected will receive $1000 and a bronze medal. The winners will receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and a statue. For the translated category, the prizes will be split between writer and translator.
Fiction
- Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
- Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal (S&S)
- This Other Eden by Paul Harding (Norton)
- The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen (Holt)
- Blackouts by Justin Torres (FSG)
Nonfiction
- The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk (Yale UP)
- Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice by Cristina Rivera Garza (Hogarth)
- Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (FSG)
- We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh (Other Press)
- Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant (Knopf)
Poetry
- How to Communicate by John Lee Clark (Norton)
- from unincorporated territory [åmot] by Craig Santos Perez (Omnidawn)
- suddenly we by Evie Shockley (Wesleyan UP)
- Tripas by Brandon Som (Georgia Review)
- From From by Monica Youn (Graywolf)
Translated Literature
- Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (Algonquin)
- Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop, translated from the French by Sam Taylor (FSG)
- The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel, translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato (New Vessel)
- Abyss by Pilar Quintana, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (World Editions)
- On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott (Two Lines)
Young People’s Literature
- Gather by Kenneth M. Cadow (Candlewick)
- Huda F Cares? by Huda Fahmy (Dial)
- Big by Vashti Harrison (Little, Brown)
- The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine by Katherine Marsh (Roaring Brook)
- A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat (First Second)