Kirkus Prize

The Kirkus Prize is an American literary award conferred by the book review magazine Kirkus Reviews. Established in 2014, the Kirkus Prize bestows US$150,000 annually. Three authors are awarded US$50,000 each, divided into three categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers' Literature.^[1] It has been described as one of the most lucrative prizes in literature.^[2][3]

Kirkus Prize
Awarded for	Fiction Nonfiction Young Readers' Literature
Date	Annual
Country	United States
Presented by	Kirkus Reviews
Reward	US$50,000
First award	2014; 11 years ago (2014)
Website	www.kirkusreviews.com/prize/

Eligibility and selection

Books reviewed by Kirkus Reviews that have received the Kirkus Star are automatically eligible for the Kirkus Prize and are selected for nomination. The eligibility dates of publication for books is typically between November 1 of the previous year and October 31 of the current year, with few exceptions. Self-published books that have earned the Kirkus Star are eligible for the Kirkus Prize. However, self-published books are not eligible based on their date of publication but rather the date of publication of their online review by Kirkus Reviews. All books must first be reviewed by Kirkus Reviews to be considered.^[4]

The Prize is divided into three categories: the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature. Each category is judged by a panel of three judges: a writer, a bookseller or librarian, and a Kirkus Reviews critic. The editors and staff of Kirkus Reviews evaluate each of the nominated books, conducting a first round of eliminations. The panels of judges then decide upon six finalists in each of the three categories. In the Young Readers' Literature category, the six finalists include two picture books, two middle-grade books and two teen books. The three winners are announced at a ceremony. The prize money for books with multiple authors and illustrators is divided fairly as decided by the Prize's judges and administrators.^[4]

Winners and finalists

Fiction

Kirkus Prize for Fiction winners and finalists

Year	Author	Book	Result	Ref.
2014	Lily King	Euphoria	Winner	[5][6]
	Siri Hustvedt	The Blazing World	Finalist	[7]
	Dinaw Mengestu	All Our Names
	Brian Morton	Florence Gordon
	Bill Roorbach	The Remedy for Love
	Sarah Waters	The Paying Guests
2015	Hanya Yanagihara	A Little Life	Winner	[8][9]
	Susan Barker	The Incarnations	Finalist	[8][10]
	Lucia Berlin Stephen Emerson (ed.)	A Manual for Cleaning Women
	Lauren Groff	Fates and Furies
	Valeria Luiselli Christina MacSweeney (tr.)	The Story of My Teeth
	Jim Shepard	The Book of Aron
2016	C. E. Morgan	The Sport of Kings	Winner	[11][12]
	Adam Haslett	Imagine Me Gone	Finalist	[11]
	Joe McGinniss Jr.	Carousel Court
	Annie Proulx	Barkskins
	Amor Towles	A Gentleman in Moscow
	Colson Whitehead	The Underground Railroad
2017	Lesley Nneka Arimah	What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky	Winner	[13][14]
	Mohsin Hamid	Exit West	Finalist	[13]
	Hari Kunzru	White Tears
	Carmen Maria Machado	Her Body and Other Parties
	Alice McDermott	The Ninth Hour
	Jesmyn Ward	Sing, Unburied, Sing
2018	Ling Ma	Severance	Winner	[15][16]
	Naima Coster	Halsey Street	Finalist	[15]
	Lauren Groff	Florida
	Eduardo Halfon Lisa Dillman (tr.) Daniel Hahn (tr.)	Mourning
	Nafissa Thompson-Spires	Heads of the Colored People
	Katie Williams	Tell the Machine Goodnight
2019	Colson Whitehead	The Nickel Boys	Winner	[17][18]
	Carolina De Robertis	Cantoras	Finalist	[17][19]
	Laila Lalami	The Other Americans
	Valeria Luiselli	Lost Children Archive
	Yūko Tsushima Geraldine Harcourt (tr.)	Territory of Light
	Ocean Vuong	On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
2020	Raven Leilani	Luster	Winner	[20][21]
	Tola Rotimi Abraham	Black Sunday	Finalist	[20]
	Juliana Delgado Lopera	Fiebre Tropical
	Elena Ferrante Ann Goldstein (tr.)	The Lying Life of Adults
	James McBride	Deacon King Kong
	Douglas Stuart	Shuggie Bain
2021	Joy Williams	Harrow	Winner	[22][23]
	Mariana Enríquez Megan McDowell (tr.)	The Dangers of Smoking in Bed	Finalist	[24]
	Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
	Jocelyn Nicole Johnson	My Monticello
	Pajtim Statovci David Hackston (tr.)	Bolla
	Colson Whitehead	Harlem Shuffle
2022	Hernan Diaz	Trust	Winner	[25][26]
	Michelle de Kretser	Scary Monsters	Finalist	[27]
	Arinze Ifeakandu	God's Children Are Little Broken Things
	Susan Straight	Mecca
	Yoko Tawada Margaret Mitsutani (tr.)	Scattered All Over the Earth
	Olga Tokarczuk Jennifer Croft (tr.)	The Books of Jacob
2023	James McBride	The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store	Winner	[28][29]
	Jamel Brinkley	Witness	Finalist	[30][31]
	Eleanor Catton	Birnam Wood
	Kelly Link	White Cat, Black Dog
	Paul Murray	The Bee Sting
	Jesmyn Ward	Let Us Descend
2024	Percival Everett	James	Winner	[32][33]
	Jennine Capó Crucet	Say Hello to My Little Friend	Finalist	[34][35]
	Louise Erdrich	The Mighty Red
	Paul Lynch	Prophet Song
	Richard Powers	Playground
	Rufi Thorpe	Margo's Got Money Troubles
2025	Lucas Schaefer	The Slip	Winner	[36][37]
	Kiran Desai	The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny	Finalist	[37][38]
	Angela Flournoy	The Wilderness
	Allegra Goodman	Isola
	Megha Majumdar	A Guardian and a Thief
	David Szalay	Flesh

Nonfiction

Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction winners and finalists

Year	Author	Book	Result	Ref.
2014	Roz Chast	Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?	Winner	[5][6]
	Leo Damrosch	Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World	Finalist	[7]
	Elizabeth Kolbert	The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
	Armand Marie Leroi	The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science
	Thomas Piketty Arthur Goldhammer (tr.)	Capital in the Twenty-First Century
	Bryan Stevenson	Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
2015	Ta-Nehisi Coates	Between the World and Me	Winner	[8][9]
	John Ferling	Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It	Finalist	[8][10]
	Helen Macdonald	H is for Hawk
	Adam Tooze	The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931
	Simon Winchester	Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers
	Andrea Wulf	The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
2016	Susan Faludi	In the Darkroom	Winner	[11][12]
	Sarah Bakewell	At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails	Finalist	[11]
	Matthew Desmond	Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
	Michael Eric Dyson	The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America
	Beth Macy	Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
	J. D. Vance	Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
2017	Jack E. Davis	The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea	Winner	[13][14]
	Edward Dolnick	The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come	Finalist	[13]
	Patricia Lockwood	Priestdaddy: A Memoir
	Valeria Luiselli Lizzie Davis (tr.)	Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
	Michael W. Twitty	The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
	Laura Walls	Henry David Thoreau: A Life
2018	Rebecca Solnit	Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)	Winner	[15][16]
	Shane Bauer	American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment	Finalist	[15]
	Kiese Laymon	Heavy: An American Memoir
	Beth Macy	Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America
	Sarah Smarsh	Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
	Timothy Snyder	The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
2019	Saeed Jones	How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir	Winner	[17][18]
	Hanif Abdurraqib	Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest	Finalist	[17][19]
	Naja Marie Aidt Denise Newman (tr.)	When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book
	Patrick Radden Keefe	Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
	Dina Nayeri	The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You
	Rachel Louise Snyder	No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
2020	Mychal Denzel Smith	Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream	Winner	[20][21]
	Eric Jay Dolin	A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes	Finalist	[20]
	Rebecca Giggs	Fathoms: The World in the Whale
	Deirdre Mask	The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power
	Aimee Nezhukumatathil Fumi Nakamura (ill.)	World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
	Isabel Wilkerson	Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
2021	Brian Broome	Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir	Winner	[22][23]
	Dara Horn	People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present	Finalist	[24]
	Tiya Miles	All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
	Kristen Radtke	Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness
	Katherine E. Standefer	Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
	Juan Villoro Alfred MacAdam (tr.)	Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico
2022	Tanaïs	In Sensorium	Winner	[25][26]
	Margaret A. Burnham	By Hands Now Known	Finalist	[27][39]
	Lindsey Fitzharris	The Facemaker
	Nikole Hannah-Jones Caitlin Roper (ed.) Ilena Silverman (ed.) Jake Silverstein (ed.)	The 1619 Project
	Ann Patchett	These Precious Days
	Ed Yong	An Immense World
2023	Héctor Tobar	Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"	Winner	[28][29]
	Tania Branigan	Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution	Finalist	[30][31]
	Jennifer Homans	Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century
	Clancy Martin	How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind
	Safiya Sinclair	How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
	Ilyon Woo	Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom
2024	Adam Higginbotham	Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space	Winner	[32][33]
	Steve Coll	The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq	Finalist	[34][35]
	Tessa Hulls	Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
	Olivia Laing	The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
	Shefali Luthra	Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
	Carvell Wallace	Another Word for Love: A Memoir
2025	Scott Anderson	King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation	Winner	[36][37]
	Nicholas Boggs	Baldwin: A Love Story	Finalist	[37][38]
	Sophie Elmhirst	A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
	Greg Grandin	America, América: A New History of the New World
	Imani Perry	Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
	Arundhati Roy	Mother Mary Comes to Me

Young Readers' Literature

Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature winners and finalists

Year	Author	Book	Result	Ref.
2014	Kate Samworth	Aviary Wonders Inc.: Spring Catalog and Instruction Manual	Winner	[5][6]
	Cece Bell	El Deafo	Finalist	[7]
	Jen Bryant Melissa Sweet (ill.)	The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus
	Jack Gantos	The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza
	E. K. Johnston	The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim
	Don Mitchell	The Freedom Summer Murders
2015	Pam Muñoz Ryan Dinara Mirtalipova (ill.)	Echo	Winner	[8][9]
	Martha Brockenbrough	The Game of Love and Death	Finalist	[8][10]
	Lauren Child	The New Small Person
	Daniel José Older	Shadowshaper
	Duncan Tonatiuh	Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras
	Jonah Winter Shane W. Evans (ill.)	Lillian's Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
2016	Jason Reynolds	As Brave as You	Winner	[11][12]
	Sherman Alexie Yuyi Morales (ill.)	Thunder Boy Jr.	Finalist	[11]
	Ashley Bryan	Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan
	Traci Chee	The Reader
	Russell Freedman	We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler
	Meg Medina	Burn Baby Burn
2017	Cherie Dimaline	The Marrow Thieves	Winner	[13][14]
	Jairo Buitrago Rafael Yockteng (ill.) Elisa Amado (tr.)	Walk with Me	Finalist	[13]
	Cao Wenxuan Helen Wang (tr.) Meilo So (ill.)	Bronze and Sunflower
	Karen English	It All Comes Down to This
	Lilli L'Arronge Madeleine Stratford (tr.)	Me Tall, You Small
	Angie Thomas	The Hate U Give
2018	Derrick Barnes Gordon C. James (ill.)	Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut	Winner	[15][16]
	Elizabeth Acevedo	The Poet X	Finalist	[15]
	Tomi Adeyemi	Children of Blood and Bone
	Meg Medina	Merci Suárez Changes Gears
	Yuyi Morales	Dreamers
	Jacqueline Woodson	Harbor Me
2019	Jerry Craft Jim Callahan (color.)	New Kid	Winner	[17][18]
	Kwame Alexander Kadir Nelson (ill.)	The Undefeated	Finalist	[17][19]
	Juan Felipe Herrera Lauren Castillo (ill.)	Imagine
	Angie Thomas	On the Come Up
	Juan Pablo Villalobos Rosalind Harvey (tr.)	The Other Side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border
	Alicia D. Williams	Genesis Begins Again
2020	Derrick Barnes Gordon C. James (ill.)	I Am Every Good Thing	Winner	[20][21]
	Elizabeth Acevedo	Clap When You Land	Finalist	[20]
	Hanna Alkaf	The Girl and the Ghost
	Kimberly Brubaker Bradley	Fighting Words
	Carole Lindstrom Michaela Goade (ill.)	We Are Water Protectors
	Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds	Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
2021	Christina Soontornvat	All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team	Winner	[22][23]
	Sharon G. Flake	The Life I'm In	Finalist	[24]
	Nikki Grimes	Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance
	NoNieqa Ramos Jacqueline Alcántara (ill.)	Your Mama
	Wai Chim	The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling
	Carole Boston Weatherford Floyd Cooper (ill.)	Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre
2022	Harmony Becker	Himawari House	Winner	[25][26]
	Betina Birkjær Anna Margrethe Kjærgaard (ill.) Sinéad Quirke Køngerskov (trans.)	Coffee, Rabbit, Snowdrop, Lost	Finalist	[27][39]
	Rimma Onoseta	How You Grow Wings
	Niki Smith	The Golden Hour
	Anne Ursu	The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy
	Jacqueline Woodson Rafael López (ill.)	The Year We Learned to Fly
2023	Ariel Aberg-Riger	America Redux: Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History	Winner	[28][29]
	Valerie Bolling Kaylani Juanita (ill.)	Together We Swim	Finalist	[30][31]
	Louise Finch	The Eternal Return of Clara Hart
	Kiran Millwood Hargrave Tom de Freston (ill.)	Julia and the Shark
	Jon Klassen	The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale
	Roger Mello Daniel Hahn (trans.)	João by a Thread
2024	Kenneth M. Cadow	Gather	Winner	[32][33]
	Safia Elhillo	Bright Red Fruit	Finalist	[34][35]
	Joanna Ho Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya (ill.)	We Who Produce Pearls
	Hiba Noor Khan	Safiyyah's War
	Jason Reynolds Jerome Pumphrey (ill.) Jarrett Pumphrey (ill.)	There Was a Party for Langston
	Sherri Winston	Shark Teeth
2025	Thao Lam	Everybelly	Winner	[36][37]
	Derrick Barnes	The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze	Finalist	[37][38]
	Triinu Laan Marja-Liisa Plats (ill.) Adam Cullen (trans.)	John the Skeleton
	Moa Backe Åstot Agnes Broomé (trans.)	Butterfly Heart
	Candace Fleming	Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal and the Lost Dream of Jonestown
	Brian Floca Sydney Smith (ill.)	Island Storm

See also

• List of American literary awards