Megha Majumdar, Karen Russell, Yiyun Li among finalists for 76th National Book Awards

By Canadian Press on November 19, 2025.

NEW YORK (AP) — Novels by Megha Majumdar and Karen Russell as well as a memoir by Yiyun Li are among the finalists Wednesday night for the 76th annual National Book Awards.

Hundreds of writers, publishers, editors and other industry professionals are expected to gather at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan for a dinner ceremony that will include honorary awards for fiction writer George Saunders and author-publisher Roxane Gay. Emmy-winning actor-comedian Jeff Hiller will host, and Grammy winner Corinne Bailey Rae is the musical guest.

Competitive awards will be announced for five categories — fiction, nonfiction, translated literature, young people’s literature and poetry. Winners will each receive $10,000.

Nominees range from Majumdar’s futuristic narrative “A Guardian and a Thief” to Russell’s spellbound tale set in 1930s Nebraska, “The Antidote,” to Julia Ioffe’s feminist history, “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy.” Li is a finalist for “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” her tragic account of the suicides of her two sons.

The National Book Awards are presented by the nonprofit National Book Foundation. Each competitive category is voted on by judging panels that include writers, booksellers and critics and select winners from hundreds of books submitted by publishers.

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press