Living Canon

National Book Award

The National Book Awards, presented by the National Book Foundation since 1950, honor the best American literature across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature.

• The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Smith

  2025NBAPoetry
• Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

  2024NBAPoetry
• from unincorporated territory by Craig Santos Perez

  2023NBAPoetry
• Punks: New & Selected Poems by John Keene

  2022NBAPoetry
• Floaters by Martín Espada

  2021NBAPoetry
• 
  DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi

  2020NBAPoetry
• 
  Sight Lines by Arthur Sze

  2019NBAPoetry
• 
  Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed

  2018NBAPoetry
• 
  Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016† by Frank Bidart

  2017NBAPoetry
• 
  The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky

  2016NBAPoetry
• 
  Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis

  2015NBAPoetry
• 
  Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück

  2014NBAPoetry
• 
  Incarnadine by Mary Szybist

  2013NBAPoetry
• 
  Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations by David Ferry

  2012NBAPoetry
• 
  Head Off & Split: Poems by Nikky Finney

  2011NBAPoetry
• 
  Lighthead by Terrance Hayes

  2010NBAPoetry
• Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop

  2009NBAPoetry
• 
  Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty

  2008NBAPoetry
• 
  Time and Materials: Poems, 1997–2005† by Robert Hass

  2007NBAPoetry
• 
  Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey

  2006NBAPoetry
• 
  Migration: New and Selected Poems by W. S. Merwin

  2005NBAPoetry
• Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003 by Jean Valentine

  2004NBAPoetry
• 
  The Singing by C. K. Williams

  2003NBAPoetry
• In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone

  2002NBAPoetry
• 
  Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry by Alan Dugan

  2001NBAPoetry
• 
  Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 by Lucille Clifton

  2000NBAPoetry
• 
  Vice: New and Selected Poems by Ai

  1999NBAPoetry
• 
  This Time: New and Selected Poems by Gerald Stern

  1998NBAPoetry
• 
  Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith

  1997NBAPoetry
• 
  Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems, 1991–1995 by Hayden Carruth

  1996NBAPoetry
• 
  Passing Through: The Later Poems by Stanley Kunitz

  1995NBAPoetry
• Worshipful Company of Fletchers by James Tate

  1994NBAPoetry
• 
  Garbage by A. R. Ammons

  1993NBAPoetry
• 
  New and Selected Poems(vol. 1 of two) by Mary Oliver

  1992NBAPoetry
• 
  What Work Is by Philip Levine

  1991NBAPoetry
• Selected Poems † by Galway Kinnell

  1983NBAPoetry
• 
  Country Music: Selected Early Poems* by Charles Wright

  1983NBAPoetry
• 
  Life Supports: New and Collected Poems by William Bronk

  1982NBAPoetry
• 
  The Need to Hold Still: Poems by Lisel Mueller

  1981NBAPoetry
• 
  Ashes: Poems New and Old by Philip Levine

  1980NBAPoetry
• The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

  1979NBAYoung People's
• 
  Mirabell: Books of Number by James Merrill

  1979NBAPoetry
• 
  The View From the Oak: The Private Worlds of Other Creatures by Judith KohlandHerbert Kohl

  1978NBAYoung People's
• 
  The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov† by Howard Nemerov

  1978NBAPoetry
• 
  The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson

  1977NBAYoung People's
• 
  Collected Poems, 1930–1976: Including 43 New Poems by Richard Eberhart

  1977NBAPoetry
• 
  Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror† by John Ashbery

  1976NBAPoetry
• 
  Bert Breen's Barn by Walter D. Edmonds

  1976NBAYoung People's
• 
  Presentation Piece by Marilyn Hacker

  1975NBAPoetry
• 
  M. C. Higgins the Great by Virginia Hamilton

  1975NBAYoung People's
• 
  The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965–1971 by Allen Ginsberg

  1974NBAPoetry
• 
  The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron

  1974NBAYoung People's
• 
  Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 by Adrienne Rich

  1974NBAPoetry
• 
  The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

  1973NBAYoung People's
• 
  Collected Poems, 1951–1971 by A. R. Ammons

  1973NBAPoetry
• The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or The Hithering Thithering Djinn by Donald Barthelme

  1972NBAYoung People's
• 
  The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara(posth.) by Frank O'Hara

  1972NBAPoetry
• 
  Selected Poems by Howard Moss

  1972NBAPoetry
• 
  To See, to Take: Poems by Mona Van Duyn

  1971NBAPoetry
• 
  The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian by Lloyd Alexander

  1971NBAYoung People's
• 
  The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop

  1970NBAPoetry
• 
  A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  1970NBAYoung People's
• Journey from Peppermint Street by Meindert DeJong

  1969NBAYoung People's
• His Toy, His Dream, His Rest by John Berryman

  1969NBAPoetry
• 
  The Light Around the Body by Robert Bly

  1968NBAPoetry
• Nights and Days by James Merrill

  1967NBAPoetry
• 
  Buckdancer's Choice: Poems by James Dickey

  1966NBAPoetry
• The Far Field(posth.) by Theodore Roethke

  1965NBAPoetry
• 
  Selected Poems by John Crowe Ransom

  1964NBAPoetry
• Traveling Through the Dark by William Stafford

  1963NBAPoetry
• 
  Poems† by Alan Dugan

  1962NBAPoetry
• The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Poems and Translations by Randall Jarrell

  1961NBAPoetry
• Life Studies by Robert Lowell

  1960NBAPoetry
• 
  Words for the Wind: Poems of Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke

  1959NBAPoetry
• 
  The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

  1959NBAFiction
• 
  The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever

  1958NBAFiction
• 
  Promises: Poems, 1954–1956 † by Robert Penn Warren

  1958NBAPoetry
• 
  Things of This World † by Richard Wilbur

  1957NBAPoetry
• 
  The Field of Vision by Wright Morris

  1957NBAFiction
• The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden

  1956NBAPoetry
• Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara

  1956NBAFiction
• The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens† by Wallace Stevens

  1955NBAPoetry
• 
  A Fable by William Faulkner

  1955NBAFiction
• 
  The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

  1954NBAFiction
• 
  Collected Poems by Conrad Aiken

  1954NBAPoetry
• 
  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

  1953NBAFiction
• 
  Collected Poems, 1917–1952 † by Archibald MacLeish

  1953NBAPoetry
• 
  From Here to Eternity by James Jones

  1952NBAFiction
• 
  Collected Poems † by Marianne Moore

  1952NBAPoetry
• The Auroras of Autumn by Wallace Stevens

  1951NBAPoetry
• 
  Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner

  1951NBAFiction
• 
  The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

  1950NBAFiction
• Paterson: Book ThreeandSelected Poems(two books) by William Carlos Williams

  1950NBAPoetry
• Winner by As I Remember Him: The Biography of R.S.

  1940NBANonfiction
• 
  Who Walk Alone by Perry Burgess

  1940NBANonfiction
• 
  Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  1939NBANonfiction
• Winner by With Malice Toward Some

  1938NBANonfiction
• Winner by Listen! The Wind

  1938NBANonfiction
• 
  The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer by David Fairchild

  1938NBANonfiction
• Winner by Madame Curie

  1937NBANonfiction
• Four Hundred Million Customers: The Experiences—Some Happy, Some Sad, of an American Living in China, and What They Taught Him by Carl Crow

  1937NBANonfiction
• Winner by The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865

  1936NBANonfiction
• 
  The Country Kitchen by Della T. Lutes

  1936NBANonfiction
• 
  North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  1935NBANonfiction

• Fiction
• Nonfiction
• Poetry
• Young People’s Literature

See also

• Arthur C. Clarke Award
• Booker Prize
• Caldecott Medal
• Carnegie Medal
• Costa Book Awards
• Edgar Awards
• Giller Prize
• Hugo Awards
• International Booker Prize
• Kirkus Prize
• Lambda Literary Awards
• Locus Awards
• National Book Critics Circle Award
• Nebula Awards
• Newbery Medal
• Nobel Prize in Literature
• PEN/Faulkner Award
• PEN/Hemingway Award
• Pulitzer Prizes
• Women’s Prize for Fiction
• World Fantasy Awards