The National Book Foundation (NBF) has expanded eligibility criteria for the National Book Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature to include authors who do not hold U.S. citizenship.
Authors who "maintain their primary, long-term home in the U.S., U.S. territories, or Tribal lands" will be eligible for consideration for the 75th National Book Awards, which will open for submissions on March 13.
The new criteria will also sunset the petition process for non-U.S. citizens instituted by the NBF in 2018, which expanded eligibility in the Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature categories to include authors actively pursuing, or unable to pursue U.S. citizenship. The Translated Literature category, introduced in 2018, has never had a citizen requirement for authors or translators.
The move comes just months after the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that it would be dropping its U.S. citizenship requirement for its books and arts prizes, expanding eligibility to permanent U.S. residents and those for whom the U.S. is "their longtime primary home." The Pulitzer announcement, which was made in September 2023, followed a widely circulated open letter on Lit Hub, prompted by an op-ed by Salvadoran-born author Javier Zamora demanding the rule change.
