Living Canon

Kirkus Prize 2022: Complete list of winners

The 2022 Kirkus Prize winners showcase the kind of boundary-pushing storytelling that has made Kirkus one of the literary world’s most respected voices. Hernan Diaz’s Trust, a metafictional exploration of narrative reliability and historical truth, claimed the fiction prize, while Tanaïs’s sensory memoir In Sensorium took home the nonfiction award. These selections reflect what many observers noticed this year: a preference for formally inventive work that challenges readers to think differently about how stories get told. The Kirkus Prize, which annually recognizes the most outstanding literature across fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ categories, has long been known for championing books that critics love as much as readers do.

What’s particularly striking about this year’s slate is the diversity of form and subject matter across all three categories. Young readers’ literature went to Harmony Becker’s Himawari House, a graphic novel that brings warmth and specificity to themes of identity and belonging. The Kirkus Prize winners for 2022 collectively demonstrate how contemporary literature is expanding beyond traditional narratives—whether through Diaz’s intricate structural games, Tanaïs’s poetic meditations on the sensory world, or Becker’s visual storytelling. Each represents a distinct vision of what literature can be.

Here are the complete details on this year’s Kirkus Prize honorees:

Fiction

Nonfiction

Young Readers’ Literature