The National Book Foundation is releasing longlists for the 2026 National Book Awards this week, including the Nonfiction and Poetry categories. Finalists will be announced on October 6, and winners named on November 18 at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony. The longlisted in these categories titles are:
Nonfiction
Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America by Rozina Ali (Crown)
The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music by Colin Asher (W.W. Norton)
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zayd Ayers Dohrn (W.W. Norton)
Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming by Abdelrahman ElGendy (Hogarth)
Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom by Camonghne Felix (One)
The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home by Wil Haygood (Knopf)
Mother Tongue by Sara Nović (Random House)
Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood by Joseph Osmundson (Bloomsbury Publishing)
The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming by Angela Pelster (Milkweed Editions)
A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint by Wendy S. Walters (Scribner)
Poetry
Tree of Knowledge by Victoria Chang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hide by Carolina Ebeid (Graywolf Press)
Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation by Brenda Hillman (Wesleyan University Press)
The Bronze Arms by Richie Hofmann (Knopf)
Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions)
We by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf Press)
Promise/Threat by Jonah Mixon-Webster (Knopf)
JOAN by Jake Rose (University of Chicago Press)
Horses by Jake Skeets (Milkweed Editions)
Bramble by Susan Stewart (University of Chicago Press)