The National Book Critics Circle announced its 2025 award winners on March 26, 2026, per the organization, and the fiction prize went to Han Kang for We Do Not Part, a novel about the consequences of the Jeju uprising, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. The win follows her 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Toni Morrison Achievement Award went jointly to PBS and NPR, with the two broadcasters named together as co-recipients in the announcement.
Frances FitzGerald received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. The organization described her as a "fearless journalist, rigorous historian."
Kevin Young, Arundhati Roy, and Karen Hao were also named among the 2025 winners, rounding out an announcement that spans fiction, lifetime achievement, and broadcast honors.
The winners were confirmed in the official announcement at bookcritics.org, with additional reporting from The New York Times. The result lands in the middle of a spring season of literary prize news across the English-language book world, a stretch of the calendar also covered by outlets including Reuters.
The 2025 award winners, per the National Book Critics Circle:
- Han Kang, fiction, for We Do Not Part, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
- Kevin Young, Arundhati Roy, and Karen Hao, additional categories
- PBS and NPR, jointly, Toni Morrison Achievement Award
- Frances FitzGerald, Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award
Why it matters
For readers, the winners list works as a shortcut to the most honored books of the publishing year, and a fiction prize for a recent Nobel laureate keeps translated fiction at the center of the American critical conversation. Books that win here tend to stay stocked, taught, and discussed — which is exactly what a list like this is for.
For more context, read Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Goes to Daniel Kraus.
For more context, read women's prize for fiction.
For more context, read How a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Actually Gets Decided.