2026 National Book Awards Finalist Reading

The 2026 National Book Awards Finalist Reading will be hosted by Traci Thomas, creator and host of the critically acclaimed literary podcast The Stacks.

Each year, the Finalists in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature gather the evening before the National Book Awards Ceremony to read excerpts from their honored works. To learn more about the 2026 National Book Awards Finalists, click here.

Doors open at 6:30pm, and the program begins at 7:00pm EST.

The event will be presented in person at NYU Skirball and livestreamed for readers everywhere. If you’re unable to attend in person, please register for the livestream here.

Presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation and the NYU Creative Writing Program.

Fiction Finalists:

• 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 Finalists:

• 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 Finalists:

• 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 Finalists:

• Karl Ove Knausgaard, and translator Martin Aitken, The School of Night
• Vicente Luis Mora, and translator Rahul Bery, Centroeuropa
• Intan Paramaditha, and translators Stephen J. Epstein and Tiffany Tsao, Night of a Thousand Hells
• Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and translator Lara Vergnaud, Pure Men
• Samar Yazbek, and translator Leri Price, Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza

Young People’s Literature Finalists:

• 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

(Finalists will not appear in this order)

Presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation and the NYU Creative Writing Program.

Please email Emily Lovett at [email protected] with any questions and accessibility requests.