The National Book Award is one of the nation's most prestigious literary prizes and has a stellar record of identifying and rewarding quality writing. In 1950, William Carlos Williams was the first Winner in Poetry, the following year William Faulkner was honored in Fiction, and so on through the years.
Many previous Winners of a National Book Award are now firmly established in the canon of American literature, such as Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, James McBride, Joyce Carol Oates, and Adrienne Rich.
These are all the books on this year's longlists for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature. Please do not add other books to the list. Feel free to vote for your favorites!

National Book Award Winners

National Book Award Short List:
2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016

National Book Award Long List:
2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
1

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4.31 avg rating — 2,014,789 ratings
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2

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4.07 avg rating — 628,004 ratings
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3

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3.72 avg rating — 26,088 ratings
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4

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3.63 avg rating — 20,834 ratings
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5

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4.16 avg rating — 32,412 ratings
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6

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4.23 avg rating — 953 ratings
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7

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3.91 avg rating — 29,867 ratings
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8

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3.83 avg rating — 14,339 ratings
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9

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4.12 avg rating — 40,130 ratings
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10

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3.95 avg rating — 36,026 ratings
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11

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3.66 avg rating — 6,986 ratings
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12

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3.90 avg rating — 2,192 ratings
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13

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4.15 avg rating — 93,914 ratings
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14

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3.97 avg rating — 2,518 ratings
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15

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3.96 avg rating — 25,207 ratings
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16

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4.46 avg rating — 4,266 ratings
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17

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3.74 avg rating — 12,207 ratings
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18

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4.24 avg rating — 8,887 ratings
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19

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4.01 avg rating — 408 ratings
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20

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3.85 avg rating — 5,020 ratings
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21

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4.25 avg rating — 52,449 ratings
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22

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3.93 avg rating — 5,001 ratings
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23

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3.81 avg rating — 6,130 ratings
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24

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4.64 avg rating — 146 ratings
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25

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3.90 avg rating — 2,562 ratings
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26

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3.48 avg rating — 243 ratings
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27

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4.35 avg rating — 1,055 ratings
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28

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3.33 avg rating — 55 ratings
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29

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3.93 avg rating — 56 ratings
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30

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3.93 avg rating — 6,152 ratings
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31

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4.43 avg rating — 825 ratings
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32

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3.32 avg rating — 284 ratings
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33

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3.42 avg rating — 166 ratings
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34

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4.41 avg rating — 188 ratings
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35

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4.09 avg rating — 140 ratings
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36

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4.33 avg rating — 375 ratings
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37

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4.01 avg rating — 12,370 ratings
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38

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3.99 avg rating — 29,696 ratings
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39

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3.97 avg rating — 984 ratings
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40

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4.04 avg rating — 6,672 ratings
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41

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4.09 avg rating — 4,204 ratings
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41 books · 76 voters · list created September 18th, 2014 by Elizabeth (votes) .
37 likes · 
Lists are re-scored approximately every 5 minutes.


Elizabeth 1657 books
82 friends
Dawn 428 books
237 friends
Jennifer 3579 books
990 friends
WWNorton 20 books
257 friends
Susanna - Censored by GoodReads 3388 books
851 friends
Bettie 15685 books
19 friends
Laura 334 books
5 friends
Myles 3279 books
162 friends

More voters…


Comments Showing 1-5 of 5 (5 new)

dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by LindaJ^ (new)

LindaJ^ I read the 10 books on the 2014 fiction longlist - I thought they were all good and very different from each other. I'm rooting for Station Eleven to go home with the award!


message 2: by Kelly (new)

Kelly "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford (currently at #24) was actually published in 2009.

Can someone remove it from the list?


message 3: by LindaJ^ (new)

LindaJ^ While I did not double check against the National Book Award lists, there are a lot of other books that do not indicate on their Goodreads page that they were on the National Book Award's various longlists, especially among the children's/YA selections.


message 4: by Elizabeth (new)

Elizabeth Hi,
Thanks for alerting me to the problem. I've put in a request to the Goodreads librarians to remove the added books that were not on the longlist.


message 5: by Susanna - Censored by GoodReads (last edited Dec 29, 2014 06:26PM) (new)

Susanna - Censored by GoodReads Went to nab Corner of Bitter and Sweet, but see I was beaten to it.


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