The National Book Awards has appeared to overwhelmingly favor books by minority authors or about minority subjects over the last decade — prompting a New York Times columnist to brand the hallowed accolade a “DEI checklist.”
Of the 10 awards for fiction handed out by the National Book Foundation since 2015, nine were given to minority authors while just one was given to a white author.
In the non-fiction category, all 10 of the awards during that same period went to minority authors.
Those overwhelming recipients prompted New York Times columnist Bret Stephens to brand the awards a “DEI checklist” Tuesday, and to question whether the National Book Foundation was really interested in selection America’s best books or just pandering to “bald politicization.”
“The National Book Awards are no longer national in any meaningful sense,” Stephens wrote. “At best, they represent the recondite tastes of that fraction of the country.”
And the supposed favoritism didn’t just apply to the winners — the 2026 awards’ 10 finalists followed a similar template, with nine out of 10 coming from minority authors and subjects ranging from race to sexual orientation.
Only one book was from a Jewish, white and straight male, which Stephens argued “in a sane world, should have no bearing on whether his book deserves to make the longlist.”
Non-fiction finalists were similar. They included a book about “an experiment in queer parenthood,” another about “the rise of Islamophobia in America,” while a third was “an argument against white paint,” according to the National Book Foundation’s longlist.
The National Book Award has been handed out since 1950 and is considered to be among America’s most prestigious literary award. The likes of Philip Roth, William Faulkner, Joan Didion and Flannery O’Connor have all been recipients in a whose-who of contemporary literature’s greats.
But the vast majority of its winners were white males until recent decades, prompting the criticisms — the kind dogging various arts awards for years — that minority voices have been largely neglected.
And Stephens suggested the National Book Foundation’s focus on minority authors and subjects could be a literary “form of reparations” — but which would only end up perpetuating the original problem.
“As an old friend of mine liked to say, turning the tables isn’t the same thing as achieving justice,” he added. “The bald politicization of the nation’s highest literary prizes is achieving several forms of injustice at once.”
And he argued the practice was “deforming and hollowing” American literature, leading not only to readers possibly disappearing but also would-be writers giving up before they’ve even started.
“Writers or scholars whose subjects or views don’t fit the preferences of prize givers will pay a price for their intellectual independence,” he wrote. “Others, not keen on careers of penury and oblivion, will never become writers or scholars in the first place.”
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture,” Stephens concluded, quoting “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray Bradbury. “Just get people to stop reading them.”
