44th Annual Northern California Book Awards

Celebrating books published by Northern California authors and California literary translators in 2024

Saturday, September 6, 2025 • 2:00 pm PDT

Reception follows

Check back later for updates, including juror’s statements for each nominated book.

Celebrate Northern California's vibrant literary community on Saturday, September 6, 2025, 2:00 pm PDT, when the 44th annual Northern California Book Awards will recognize the best published works of 2024 by Northern California authors and California literary translators. Reviewers and editors—members of Northern California Book Reviewers—select the awards. A reception at the library with bookselling will follow the ceremony. The event is free and open to the public.

The NCBAs are presented by Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, and the San Francisco Public Library. Our community partners are Mechanics' Institute Library and Women’s National Book Association-San Francisco Chapter.

Awards will be presented to Northern California authors for Fiction, Poetry, General Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Children’s Literature.

The California Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose will honor works of translation by literary translators based anywhere in California.

Nominated books will be available for purchase at the event. The winning book in each category will be announced in-person at the awards ceremony. The Northern California Book Reviewers Recommended Reading List, all of the nominated books, will be celebrated at the ceremony.

For more information: info@poetryflash.org, 510.525.5476, Cell 510.612.3958.

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2025 Awards Program

The complete list of honorees will be announced in August.

FRED CODY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT & SERVICE

Rebecca Solnit
Writer, Historian, and Activist
Notable works include: No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain; River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West; The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster; Men Explain Things to Me; Recollections of My Nonexistence, a memoir, and more.

NCBA GROUNDBREAKER AWARD

Paul Yamazaki, Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale, Ode Books

NOMINEES

POETRY
To Be Announced

FICTION
To Be Announced

CREATIVE NONFICTION
To Be Announced

GENERAL NONFICTION
To Be Announced

CALIFORNIA TRANSLATION

California Translation in Poetry
Guerilla Blooms, Daniela Catrileo, translated from Spanish by Edith Adams, Eulalia Books
No Gods Live Here, Conceição Lima, translated from Portuguese by Shook, Phoneme Media/Deep Vellum
To the Letter: Poems, Tomasz Różycki, translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal, Archipelago Books

California Translation in Prose
Chronicles of A Village, Nguyễn Thanh Hiên, translated from the Vietnamese by Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, Yale University Press
Jénifer, or a French Princess: The (Truly) Unknown Islands, Joel Neto, translated from the Portuguese by Diniz Borges and Katharine F. Baker, Letras Lavadas Edições/Bruma Publications
The Tears and Smiles of Things: Stories, Sketches, Meditations, Andriy Sodomora, translated from the Ukrainian by Roman Ivashkiv and Sabrina Jaszi, Academic Studies Press

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Younger Readers
Eloísa’s Musical Window, Margarita Engle, illustrated by John Parra, Atheneum Books for Young Readers
The Man Who Didn't Like Animals, Deborah Underwood, illustrated by LeUyen Pham, Clarion Books
The Night Market, Seina Wedlick, illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu, Random House Studio

Middle Grade
The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, Gennifer Choldenko, Knopf Books for Young Readers
The Long Way Around, Anne Nesbet, Candlewick Press
The Wrong Way Home, Kate O'Shaughnessy, Knopf Books for Young Readers

Young Adult
To Be Announced

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History of the Northern California Book Awards Since 1981, the Northern California Book Reviewers, a volunteer group of book reviewers and book review editors, have honored the work of Northern California authors. One of the group's founders was Fred Cody, proprietor of the late great independent bookstore in Berkeley. The Fred Cody Award for lifetime achievement is presented every year to a member of the literary community. Previous recipients include Jane Hirshfield, Brenda Hillman, Isabel Allende, Juan Felipe Herrera, Daniel Ellsberg, Sandra M. Gilbert, Jack Hirschman, Judy Grahn, Susan Griffin, Willis Barnstone, Adam Hochschild, Kay Ryan, Michael Pollan, Al Young, Tamim Ansary, Andrew Hoyem, Diane di Prima, Orville Schell, Philip Levine, Ronald Takaki, Francisco X. Alarcón, Carolyn Kizer, Ishmael Reed, Maxine Hong Kingston, Robert Hass, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Malcolm Margolin, Adrienne Rich, Wallace Stegner, Kay Boyle, William Everson, Alice Walker, Gary Snyder, Jessica Mitford, Tillie Olsen, M.F.K. Fisher, Robert Duncan, and Nancy J. Peters.

NCBA Guidelines and Information: poetryflash.org/programs/?p=ncba.