Kevin Young won the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize, which is designed to "encourage and celebrate excellence in poetry," for Night Watch (Knopf). The prize is for first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English and submitted from anywhere in the world. Each of the other finalists receives C$10,000 (about US$7,170).
The judges called the book "a melancholic and haunting collection of sequence poems that layers multiple literary traditions with a dexterity that amounts to a provocation of sonic and epic proportions."
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Konstantin Richter has won the 2026 German Non-Fiction Prize for Dreihundert Männer. Aufstieg und Fall der Deutschland AG (Three Hundred Men: The Rise and Fall of Germany Inc.). Richter receives €25,000 (about $28,900). The prize is awarded by the Börsenverein's Foundation for Book Culture and the Promotion of Reading, the Deutsche Bank Foundation, the City of Hamburg, and the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The jury wrote: "To this day, the concept of 'Germany Inc.' continues to shape our conception of ourselves as a successful economic nation. In his history of the German economy from the early days of industrialisation to the present, Konstantin Richter shows just how little the ideas and assumptions associated with this model still correspond to contemporary realities. Through a skillfully constructed narrative, he reveals how the network of the '300 men' shaped Germany on a personal, economic and political level. One thing becomes clear: this came at a cost. Nostalgia offers no way forward. Konstantin Richter exposes what lies behind the abstract notion of the 'German economy,' providing a foundation for drawing the right conclusions for the future."