National Book Award: Winners, Finalists and Longlisted Titles

National Book Award Medals

The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America. National Book Awards are given five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.

Here we highlight the winners of African descent. The first African-American writer to win a National Book Award was Ralph Ellison, in 1953, for Invisible Man.

Check Out AALBC’s Coverage of the National Book Awards:  2024202320172016201520142013


11 Books Honored by the National Book Foundation in 2016

Finalist - Fiction

Winner - Fiction

Winner - Nonfiction

Stamped from the Beginning (Revised): The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
by Ibram X. Kendi

List Price: $22.99
Bold Type Books (Jun 20, 2023)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 640 pages
More Info

Longlist - Nonfiction

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice
by Patricia Bell-Scott

List Price: $30.00
Alfred A. Knopf (Feb 02, 2016)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 480 pages
More Info

Longlist - Poetry

Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015
by Kevin Young

    List Price: $30.00
    Knopf (Feb 02, 2016)
    Poetry, Hardcover, 608 pages
    More Info

    Longlist - Poetry

    Finalist - Poetry

    Finalist - Young People’s Literature

    Winner - Young People’s Literature

    Longlist - Young People’s Literature

    Longlist - Young People’s Literature