Living Canon

Kirkus Prize 2025: Complete list of winners

The Kirkus Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in American publishing, has revealed its 2025 winners, and this year’s selections showcase the remarkable range of voices earning recognition from one of the industry’s most respected critical institutions. Lucas Schaefer’s The Slip takes the fiction award, while Scott Anderson’s sweeping historical account King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation claims the nonfiction prize. Rounding out the trio, Thao Lam’s Everybelly wins in the Young Readers’ Literature category, affirming the Kirkus Prize’s commitment to honoring excellence across all audiences and genres.

What makes this year’s Kirkus Prize selections particularly compelling is their thematic weight and ambition. Anderson’s work of contemporary history tackles a pivotal moment in twentieth-century geopolitics with the narrative drive of a political thriller, while Schaefer’s fiction win suggests a year when the prize’s judges valued literary innovation alongside emotional resonance. Lam’s victory in the Young Readers’ category reflects the growing recognition that children’s literature deserves the same critical attention and accolades as adult works—a shift that has gradually reshaped how major awards evaluate their categories.

The Kirkus Prize remains one of publishing’s most influential honors, with $50,000 going to each winner and a track record of identifying books that both critics and readers champion long after their announcement. Below, discover more about each 2025 winner and what sets them apart in their respective fields.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Young Readers’ Literature