Here is the 2026 National Book Award Shortlist for Nonfiction

“It’s a fog-piercing down-bound train of a book, better than it had to be… [A] multilayered indictment of America’s prison system, the largest in the world.” —The New York Times

“Asher does especially nimble work in portraying his subjects as three-dimensional figures while detailing how the record industry exploited their links to the prison system to profit off their music, often in ways that flattened their life narratives. This is illuminating.” ―Publishers Weekly

“A beautifully written portrait of a radical political awakening.” —Hanif Abdurraqib

“In Abdelrahman ElGendy’s hands, the brutal, idiotic DNA of authoritarianism has no chance, its grip is futile. ElGendy has purposely sweetened the nightmare, I hope readers learn the lesson. I will never be the same after reading Huna—a pivotal addition to world literature.” Javier Zamora

“In these fierce yet tender pages, Camonghne Felix reveals how imagination can become a form of governance—an instrument for creating a world rooted in care, community, and radical possibility.” —Michelle Alexander

“A few pages into Let the Poets Govern, you will want to read this book out loud to strangers on the street via bullhorn. Several chapters in, you’ll be pricing professional-grade stereo systems and asking friends if you can borrow their balcony for the weekend. The people need to hear what this poet has to say.” —Saeed Jones

“Mother Tongue is one of the most powerful memoirs I have read in years, a book I defy anyone to read without being challenged or changed… A revelation and a reckoning.” —Nicole Chung

“Lucid and rigorously researched, Nović’s memoir offers a powerful critique of the systems that have marginalized deaf Americans across the decades. It’s a sobering must-read.”—Publishers Weekly

“A singular and deeply moving book. Osmundson has birthed a profound meditation on family and food, longing and loss, hope and grief, humans and salmon. In his story, we find a multitude of beautiful, complicated ways of imagining the future-and then working to build one.” —Ed Yong

“With Spawning Season, Joseph Osmundson offers us an intimate look at the way queer theory becomes written on the body and moves through the world. Spawning Season is a book that only a queer scientist could write, and a powerful exploration of the relationships between queer men and queer women, between white queers and queers of color. A powerful rejoinder to old notions about fatherhood, emotion, and masculinity, Spawning Season is a reminder that queer theory calls on us to not just transform society but also ourselves.” ―Chanda Prescod-Weinstein