This week the National Book Foundation is releasing longlists for the 2025 National Book Awards. Finalists will be announced October 7, and winners named November 19 at the National Book Awards Ceremony. This year's longlisted titles in the Poetry and Nonfiction categories are:
Poetry
Death Does Not End at the Sea by Gbenga Adesina (University of Nebraska Press)
The New Economy by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Copper Canyon Press)
Becoming Ghost by Cathy Linh Che (Washington Square Press)
Scorched Earth by Tiana Clark (Washington Square Press)
Death of the First Idea by Rickey Laurentiis (Knopf)
Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin (Alice James Books)
Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero (Copper Canyon Press)
I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken (Copper Canyon Press)
The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Smith (Scribner)
TERROR COUNTER by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi (Deep Vellum)
Nonfiction
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Knopf)
Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State by Caleb Gayle (Riverhead)
Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy by Julia Ioffe (Ecco)
For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy (Pantheon)
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam by Lana Lin (Dorothy, a publishing project)
Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening by Ben Ratliff (Graywolf Press)
Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care by Claudia Rowe (Abrams)
When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas (Riverhead)
The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd's Life by Helen Whybrow (Milkweed Editions)
