2025 National Book Awards

The 76th National Book Awards (NBA), presented at a ceremony and benefit dinner by the National Book Foundation, took place on November 19, 2025, in New York City. The ceremony included a musical performance by Corinne Bailey Rae, with Jeff Hiller giving the welcoming and closing remarks.

Winner and nominees

Rumaan Alam, author of 2020 finalist Leave the World Behind
Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
Attica Locke, author of Guide Me Home and Black Water Rising
Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum, The Giant's House, and Thunderstruck, which have all been honored by the NBA
Cody Morrison, bookseller at Square Books

Heather Kathleen Moody Hall, proprietor of the Green Feather Book Company
Tiya Miles, historian, professor at Harvard, and author of NBA-winning All That She Carried
Raj Patel, journalist, filmmaker, and author of Stuffed and Starved
Cristina Rivera Garza, author of Pulitzer prize-winning Liliana's Invincible Summer and professor at the University of Houston
Eli Saslow, twice Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and writer-at-large for The New York Times

Stesha Brandon, literature and humanities program manager at the Seattle Public Library
Bill Johnston, Polish and French literature translator known for National Translation Award-winning translation of Pan Tadeusz
Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, Romance studies professor at Duke University
Karen Tei Yamashita, professor emerita at University of California, Santa Cruz and author of I Hotel

Cathy Berner, bookseller at Blue Willow Bookshop and former school librarian
David Bowles, professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and author of My Two Border Towns
candice iloh, author of 2020 NBA-finalist Every Body Looking
Jung Kim, education professor at Lewis University
Maulik Pancholy, actor and award-winning author best known for his role as Jonathan on 30 Rock and Baljeet on Phineas and Ferb