Images Courtesy of BPL<\/p>\n
Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) has announced the longlists for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. Covering a wide range of topics reflecting Brooklyn\u2019s diverse and creative communities, the longlist includes novels, fairy tales, graphic novels, poetry, memoir, and nonfiction. Librarians and staff reviewed 135 books, drawing on their expertise in literature and contemporary writing as well as their first-hand knowledge of Brooklyn\u2019s avid reading community.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom our home in New York City to Appalachia, and from Shanghai to Paris, the books on the 2026 Brooklyn Book Prize long list consider the strength of the human spirt, often up against impossible odds,\u201d said\u00a0Linda E. Johnson, President and CEO, Brooklyn Public Library. \u201cThe extraordinary talent represented here showcases the beauty and meaning we can discover when writers are free to express themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the fiction category, a novelist introduces us to a New Yorker just evicted from her apartment. In another, we meet a man living in Appalachia who is faced with an impossible choice. In a debut novel, a woman with a ho-hum weekday job reveals a secret and sometimes turbulent weekend life.<\/p>\n
In the nonfiction category\u2014which encompasses biography, poetry, and narrative nonfiction\u2014 a memoirist traces three generations of diasporic Palestinians from Gaza to the Midwest to New York City and back. A philosopher pays tribute to the Black women who combined their ancestral spiritual beliefs from West Africa with local herbal rituals and remedies many of which we still use today. A writer explores how the subprime mortgage scandal and white collar crimes\u2014committed in corner offices\u2014dramatically changed East New York.<\/p>\n
The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize was first established in collaboration with the Brooklyn Eagles, a group of young and engaged Brooklynites who are passionate about Brooklyn Public Library, working to engage new patrons, promote the Library as a cultural center, and build a vibrant community around the resources the library offers.<\/p>\n
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2026 BOOK PRIZE LONGLISTS<\/p>\n
Alphabetical by author\u2019s last name<\/p>\n
Fiction<\/p>\n
Happiness and Love\u00a0by Zoe Dubno (Scribner)<\/p>\n
Sky Daddy\u00a0by Kate Folk (Random House)<\/p>\n
Bad Bad Girl\u00a0by Gish Jen (Knopf)<\/p>\n
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter\u00a0by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press)<\/p>\n
Sleep\u00a0by Honor Jones (Riverhead Books)<\/p>\n
Dwelling\u00a0by Emily Hunt Kivel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/p>\n
Archive of Desire: A Poem in Four Parts for C. P. Cavafy\u00a0by Robin Coste Lewis (Knopf)<\/p>\n
Drome\u00a0by Jesse Lonergan (23rd Street Books)<\/p>\n
Lonely Crowds\u00a0by Stephanie Wambugu (Little, Brown and Company)<\/p>\n
You Weren\u2019t Meant to Be Human\u00a0by Andrew Joseph White (Saga Press)<\/p>\n
Nonfiction<\/p>\n
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City\u00a0by Bench Ansfield (W.W. Norton & Company)<\/p>\n
The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders\u00a0by Sarah Aziza (Catapult)<\/p>\n
\u00a0Baldwin: A Love Story\u00a0by Nicholas Boggs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)<\/p>\n
Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal\u00a0by Mohammed El-Kurd (Haymarket Books)<\/p>\n
Jailbreak of Sparrows\u00a0by Mart\u00edn Espada (Knopf)<\/p>\n
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America\u00a0by Brian Goldstone (Crown)<\/p>\n
The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood\u00a0by Stacy Horn (Gillian Flynn Books)<\/p>\n
Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change\u00a0by Cristina Jim\u00e9nez (St. Martin\u2019s Griffin)<\/p>\n
Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature\u00a0by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian (Spiegel & Grau)<\/p>\n
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women\u2019s Magic\u00a0by Lindsey Stewart (Legacy Lit)<\/p>\n