Literary award season is in full swing, and there are dozens of books receiving honors and awards. Our TBRs will never be the same! Today, we’re looking at some must-read nonfiction award winners and a list of top-tier finalists all competing for one of America’s most prestigious awards. So let’s jump right in!

The Winners of the 2025 Kirkus Prize Announced

On October 8th, the three winners of the 2025 Kirkus Prize were announced. (The event was also livestreamed on Kirkus’ YouTube channel.) In fiction, Lucas Schaefer won for The Slip. For young people’s literature, Thao Lam won for Everybelly. And for nonfiction, journalist Scott Anderson won for King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation, which takes an in-depth look at the 1979 revolution in Iran and details its long-lasting impacts.

The judges stated, “It’s a masterful and propulsive account that chronicles a devastatingly transformative series of events whose aftereffects reverberate to this day.” Each of the winners receives $50,000, making the Kirkus award quite the prize.

The National Book Foundation Announces the Finalists for the 76th National Book Awards

The National Book Finalists are finally here! As an avid nonfiction reader, I always keep an eye out for many true stories on the finalist list, which includes:

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
• Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy by Julia Ioffe
• Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
• Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care by Claudia Rowe
• When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas

Nonfiction is always a tough category. Deeply researched projects go head-to-head with memoirs and personal essays, and they often outnumber the more personal works. This year, the finalists include a range of genres, from Yiyun Li’s memoir to Julia Ioffe’s feminist history of Russia. The winner will be announced during the ceremony on Wednesday, November 19, 2025, at 8 p.m. EST.

The Winners of the Lammys are here!

The Lambda Literary Awards have a host of different categories, including Bisexual Nonfiction, Trans Nonfiction, and LGBTQ+ Nonfiction, Lesbian Memoir/Biography, and Gay Memoir/Biography. This year, the winners include:

• Bisexual Nonfiction: You’re Embarrassing Yourself by Desiree Akhavan
• Transgender Nonfiction: Pretty by KB Brookins
• LGBTQ+ Nonfiction: The Other Olympians by Michael Waters
• Lesbian Memoir/Biography: My Withered Legs and Other Essays by Sandra Gail Lambert
• Gay Memoir/Biography: Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch
• LGBTQ Studies: When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader by Susan Stryker, edited by McKenzie Wark

You can find me over on my Substack Winchester Ave, or over on Instagram @kdwinchester. As always, feel free to drop me a line at kendra.d.winchester@gmail.com. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles over on Book Riot.