National Book Critics Circle Announces 2025 Award Shortlist — See the Full List!

The 2025 National Book Critics Circle Awards shortlist has been announced.

On Jan. 20, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) announced finalists across six categories — Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry — for the annual literary honor. The NBCC also announced the shortlist for special prizes including the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize and the John Leonard Prize, which honors a debut book across any category.

The NBCC was founded in 1974 to honor “outstanding writing and [foster] a national conversation about reading, criticism and literature,” per the organization’s mission statement.

“The NBCC is delighted to announce our 2025 shortlists,” NBCC President Adam Dalva said in a statement shared with PEOPLE. “Out of the many hundreds of titles that our organization carefully considered this year, these singular and striking finalists rose to the top.”

“Each of these books is an artistic achievement,” Davla continued. “They interrogate the lives we lead, broaden our creative and social horizons, move us and continually surprise us. Especially in this difficult time, every one of these writers and translators deserves to be celebrated — and to be widely read.”

The organization also stated that Elizabeth Taylor will be honored with the NBCC Service Award, Rhoda Fend with Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing and Frances FitzGerald with the Ivan Sandrov Lifetime Achievement Award. A winner of NBCC’s Toni Morrison Achievement Award will be announced at a ceremony on March 26 at The New School in New York City.

See the full list of NBCC Awards finalists below:

Autobiography

Biography

Criticism

Fiction

Nonfiction

Poetry

Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

• Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue by Yoko Tawada, translated from the Japanese by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda
• Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi
• Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg, translated from the Norwegian by Wendy H. Gabrielsen
• Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
• The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
• The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
  

John Leonard Prize

The awards ceremony, along with a reading from finalists on March 25, will be available to watch via livestream on the official NBCC YouTube channel.