National Book Critics Circle Award 2025: Complete list of winners
The National Book Critics Circle Award has long served as one of the literary world’s most respected honors, championing writers across genres who push boundaries and challenge readers to think differently. This year’s 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award winners showcase exactly that kind of range and ambition, spanning from Arundhati Roy’s deeply personal Mother Mary Comes to Me in the autobiography category to Karen Hao’s timely examination of artificial intelligence in Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The selections reflect a moment when literature is grappling urgently with technology, disability justice, political economy, and the personal stakes of larger historical forces.
What stands out across this year’s honorees is their willingness to interrogate power in its various forms. Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right takes on ideology and pseudoscience with scholarly precision, while Alex Green’s A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled resurrects an overlooked but crucial chapter of American institutional history. In fiction, Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, expertly translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, joins this conversation about separation and connection, and Kevin Young’s Night Watch in poetry suggests that verse, too, is attuned to our contemporary moment of vigilance and witness.
Below, discover the full roster of 2025 NBCC Award winners and what makes each a standout selection in its category.
Autobiography
- Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
Biography
Criticism
Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right by Quinn Slobodian
Fiction
- We Do Not Part by Han Kangwith e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (trans.)
Nonfiction
Poetry
- Night Watch by Kevin Young