US National Book Award 2025 Winners Announced

Omar El Akkad, Roxane Gay, and Patricia Smith won at the US National Book Awards 2025 in New York, USA, on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

The US National Book Awards are literary awards from the Northern American nation’s National Book Foundation, established in 1936. They are conferred on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature. Some of the previous winners have been Les Payne, Tamara Payne, Kacen Callender, Tiya Miles, and Jason Mott. W Paul Coates and Percival Everett won in 2024.

The US National Book Awards are literary awards from the Northern American nation’s National Book Foundation, established in 1936. They are conferred on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature. Some of the previous winners have been Les Payne, Tamara Payne, Kacen Callender, Tiya Miles, and Jason Mott. W Paul Coates and Percival Everett won in 2024.

The 2025 selection process began with longlists in September and was narrowed down to finalists on October 7.

This year’s winners include:

Nonfiction 

Jury: Tiya Miles (Chair), Heather Kathleen Moody Hall, Raj Patel, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Eli Saslow

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Knopf / Penguin Random House).

Poetry

Jury: Terrance Hayes (chair), Kate Daniels, H. Melt, Anis Mojgani, and Caridad Moro-Gronlier.

• The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Smith (Scribner / Simon & Schuster).

Roxane Gay was also honoured with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.