Does “the third time’s the charm” apply to prestigious literary awards? Edwidge Danticat will have the opportunity to find out. She’s now a three-time finalist for a National Book Award, which were announced Tuesday morning. Danticat’s novel, Dèy, is about a woman who witnesses a violent gun attack in a Miami mall. Danticat’s short story collection Krik? Krak! was a finalist for the prize in 1995, and her book Brother, I’m Dying, was a non-fiction finalist in 2007.
The other writers up for the 2026 fiction prize include Hannah Lillith Assadi, Julián Delgado Lopera, Valeria Luiselli, and debut novelist Morgan Thomas, whose book Mad Eden is a form-bending story following a patient navigator at a center providing gender-affirming care.
Similarly blending forms in the nonfiction category is Camonghne Felix. Her book Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom is both a memoir and a call-to-action, drawing on Felix’s background as a communications strategist. Felix is up against Colin Asher, Sara Nović, Joseph Osmundson, and Abdelrahman ElGendy, whose memoir, Huna, explores his time in an Egyptian prison.
The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced Nov. 18, 2026.
Find the full list below.
Fiction
Hannah Lillith Assadi, Paradiso 17
Edwidge Danticat, Dèy
Julián Delgado Lopera, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You
Valeria Luiselli, Beginning Middle End
Morgan Thomas, Mad Eden
Nonfiction
Colin Asher, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music
Abdelrahman ElGendy, Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming
Camonghne Felix, Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom
Sara Nović, Mother Tongue
Joseph Osmundson, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood
Poetry
Victoria Chang, Tree of Knowledge
Carolina Ebeid, Hide
Brenda Hillman, Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation
Fady Joudah, Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza
Susan Stewart, Bramble
Translated Literature
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The School of Night, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken
Vicente Luis Mora, Centroeuropa, translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery
Intan Paramaditha, Night of a Thousand Hells, translated from the Indonesian by Stephen J. Epstein and Tiffany Tsao
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Pure Men, translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud
Samar Yazbek, Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
Young People’s Literature
Elana K. Arnold, Holloway
Tae Keller, When Tomorrow Burns
Keala Kendall, That Which Feeds Us: A Hawaiian Gothic
David Levithan and Gabriel Duckels, The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America
Julian Randall, Shook
