The National Book Awards has unveiled its panels of judges for its 2025 literary prizes.
This year’s fiction panel will be chaired by Rumaan Alam, whose Leave the World Behind was a National Book Award finalist in 2020. Joining Alam will be Elizabeth McCracken (The Hero of This Book), Debra Magpie Earling (The Lost Journals of Sacajewea), Attica Locke (Guide Me Home), and bookseller Cody Morrison.
Leading the nonfiction panel is Tiya Miles, winner of a 2021 National Book Award for All That She Carried. She will judge alongside Raj Patel (The Value of Nothing), Cristina Rivera Garza (Liliana’s Invincible Summer), Eli Saslow (Voices From the Pandemic), and bookstore owner Heather Kathleen Moody Hall.
The translated literature panel will be chaired by librarian Stesha Brandon, who will be joined by writer and translator Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, author Karen Tei Yamashita (I Hotel), Duke University professor Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, and translator Bill Johnston.
Author David Bowles (The Prince & the Coyote) will chair the young people’s literature panel. The other judges are writer candice iloh (Salt the Water), Lewis University professor Jung Kim, bookseller Cathy Berner, and actor and author Maulik Pancholy (Nikhil Out Loud).
Terrance Hayes, a three-time National Book Award finalist who won in 2010 for Lighthead, will lead the poetry panel, joined by poets Kate Daniels, H. Melt, Anis Mojgani, and Caridad Moro-Gronlier.
The longlists for this year’s prizes will be announced in September, with the shortlists revealed on Oct. 7. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in New York on Nov. 19.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
