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2025 Nominee Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author

Swift River

A Read with Jenna Pick

2024 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize

“The book we all need to revive our souls” (Nicole Dennis-Benn): A sweeping family saga about the complicated bond between mothers and daughters, the disappearance of a father, and the long-hidden history of a declining New England mill town.

2025 Nominee Outstanding Literary Work – Children

All I Need to Be
Illustrated by Tiffany Rose / With Luana Horry

A Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick!

From spiritual activist, racial justice educator, and bestselling author Rachel Ricketts comes an inspiring picture book guiding children in heart-centered and mindfulness-based practices in the face of fear, anxiety, and racial injustice.

Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Instructional

Black Joy

Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration

With deeply personal and uplifting essays in the vein of Black Girls Rock!, You Are Your Best Thing, and I Really Needed This Today, this is “a necessary testimony on the magic and beauty of our capacity to live and love fully and out loud” (Kerry Washington).

Winner: Fiction

Long Division

A Novel

From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.

Winner: Outstanding Literary Work

Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

Alice Walker, author of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple—“an American novel of permanent importance” (San Francisco Chronicle)—crafts a bilingual collection that is both playfully imaginative and intensely moving.

Winner: Outstanding Literary Work – Children

Sulwe
Illustrated by Vashti Harrison

From Academy Award–winning actress Lupita Nyong’o comes a powerful, moving picture book about colorism, self-esteem, and learning that true beauty comes from within.