The New Yorker presents the longlists for Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction.
This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2026 National Book Awards, including Young People’s Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. To receive book recommendations from our writers and editors, plus short reviews of recent releases, sign up for our new What We’re Reading newsletter.
Five of the stories in Louise Erdrich’s collection “Python’s Kiss” were originally published in The New Yorker: the first, “Nero,” in 2012, and the most recent, “Love of My Days,” in 2025. Erdrich, Edwidge Danticat, and Valeria Luiselli are three authors on this year’s longlist who have contributed fiction to the magazine. An excerpt from Luiselli’s long-listed novel “Beginning Middle End” was published in February. Three other contenders for the award—“The Renovation,” by Kenan Orhan; “Paradiso 17,” by Hannah Lillith Assadi; and “The Disappearers,” by Marlon James—appear in The New Yorker’s list of the best books of 2026 so far.
The judges for the category this year are Matt Bell, the author of “Appleseed”; Caro De Robertis (Chair), the author of “Cantoras” and “The Palace of Eros”; Danielle King, the general manager of Left Bank Books, in St. Louis, Missouri; Akhil Sharma, the author of “Family Life”; and Diane Wilson, the author of “The Seed Keeper.”
In March, The New Yorker published an excerpt from “Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young,” Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s memoir of growing up in the Weather Underground. “I’ve spent years trying to untangle what I admire about my mother and father—their sacrifice and commitment, their radical solidarity with the Black freedom movement—from the violence and factionalism that often undermined their cause,” Dohrn writes of his parents, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who helped found the militant left-wing group during the Vietnam War. In “Seasons of Fury,” which The New Yorker excerpted in August, Rozina Ali considers a different political era, examining the post-9/11 expansion of the security state through the stories of four Muslim American families. Nine of the ten authors on the longlist are being honored by the National Book Awards for the first time; one nominee, Camonghne Felix, was long-listed for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2019.
The judges for the category this year are Eve L. Ewing, the author of “Original Sins”; Audrey I-Wei Huang, a bookseller at Belmont Books, in Belmont, Massachusetts; Jonathan C. Slaght, whose book “Owls of the Eastern Ice” was long-listed for a National Book Award in 2020; Robert Warrior (Chair), whose books include “Like a Hurricane”; and Lidia Yuknavitch, the author of “The Chronology of Water.”
“Mourning / for America won’t end,” Brenda Hillman writes in “1970,” a poem from her recent collection, “Still House in the Desert,” a meditation on impermanence and ecological loss. That poem, and another one from the collection, “The Carbon Atoms of Saved Things,” was published in The New Yorker earlier this year. “Still House in the Desert” is one of several books on the longlist that contemplate the fragility of the natural world. Four of the ten nominees—Victoria Chang, Fady Joudah, Layli Long Soldier, and Hillman—have been previously recognized by the National Book Awards.
The judges for the category this year are Rob Arnold, a poet and executive director of Poets House; Aracelis Girmay (Chair), the author of “Green of All Heads”; Jon Pineda, the author of “Let’s No One Get Hurt” and “Little Anodynes”; Roger Reeves, the author of “Best Barbarian,” which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022; and Rosanna Warren, the author of “Hindsight” and “So Forth.”
“The School of Night” is the fourth volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “Morning Star” series, which the author began writing during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The novels rifle through the history of thought and culture, tracing the paths existential unknowns have carved,” Joshua Rothman wrote in a column, considering the series in January. “The School of Night,” translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is one of ten titles on this year’s longlist. The books on the list originally appeared in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish. Intan Paramaditha’s “Night of a Thousand Hells,” about a young woman who carries out a suicide bombing and that act’s effect on her family, is the first Indonesian translation to be honored by the National Book Awards.
The judges for the category this year are Shelley Fairweather-Vega, whose translation of Hamid Ismailov’s “We Computers” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2025; Javier García del Moral, the founder of the Wild Detectives, a bookstore and bar in Dallas, Texas; John Keene, whose book “Punks” won the National Book Award in Poetry in 2022; Christopher Merrill (Chair), a former director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the author of “On the Road to Lviv” and “Flares”; and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, who received a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” award for her first novel, “Fra Keeler,” in 2012.
This year’s longlist includes fiction, nonfiction, novels in verse, and one picture book. Several titles on this year’s list explore the power of art and the written word; others feature supernatural encounters or voyages through space and time. Two of the authors on the longlist—Elana K. Arnold and David Levithan—have been nominated for the award before.
The judges for the category this year are Edith Campbell, a founder of the We Are Kid Lit Collective; Brandy Colbert (Chair), the author of “Black Birds in the Sky”; Tricia Ebarvia, a co-founder of the Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy; Jarrett J. Krosoczka, whose graphic memoir “Hey, Kiddo” was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018; and Anne Ursu, whose novel “The Real Boy” was long-listed for the National Book Award in 2013.
For more information about the 77th National Book Awards and to register to watch the winners announced live, please visit nationalbook.org/awards. ♦
