The Women’s Prize Shortlist and Other Award-Nominated and Winning Nonfiction
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It’s one of my favorite times of year—literary awards season! The literary awards that focused on new releases last year are now coming out with their longlists, shortlists and winners for the best books of 2025.
weeks ago, I shared my love for the Women’s AwardHighlighting his relatively new award in nonfiction. For several weeks, book lovers around the world have predicted their choices for the shortlist, and on March 25, they announced the titles going to the awards ceremony.
The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist will be announced on April 22, and the winners of both the fiction and nonfiction awards will be revealed on June 11.
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I’m a sucker for a good awards list, but few match my tastes, like the National Book Critics Circle Awards. So I was glad to see them announce their winners. For his non-fiction awards, The Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI Won for nonfiction by Karen Hao. A Model Upheaval: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled Won for Biography by Alex Green, and Mother Mary comes to me Written by Arundhati Roy (one of my favorite memoirs of last year) won for Autobiography.
Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, Intelligence, and the Capitalism of the Far Right Won for criticism by Quinn Slobodian. And finally, Baldwin: a love story The John Leonard Award was won by Nicholas Boggs. What a year this has been for nonfiction!
Every year, I attend the Appalachian Studies Association’s annual conference and sit excitedly waiting for the winners of the Weatherford Awards to be announced. As noted on their website, “The Weatherford Awards honor the books that best highlight the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South.” They have three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. This year he announced screamed Denali by Sai Nalamalapu (one of my favorite books of 2025) as a winner in nonfiction. He also revealed the names of two finalists in nonfiction, The Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries and by Jeremy Jones Toward Just Change: Approaches to Regenerative Communities in Appalachia. Katherine Engle and Shauna L. By Scott.