Editing National Book Award (section)

=== 1987-present day ===

In 1987 the "National" award returned in name. Covering the November ceremony, Edwin McDowell of ''The New York Times'' remarked upon the recurring changes in format and contrasted 1983 in particular, when there were 96 finalists in 27 awards categories (listed above).

The surviving awards for general [[National Book Award for Fiction|Fiction]] and [[National Book Award for Nonfiction|Nonfiction]], now with precisely five finalists each, were administered by National Book Awards, Inc., whose Chairman of the Board was the president of Hearst Trade Book Group. He declaimed that "Book people are really not actors, and there's a realization now that we should not try to reward things like who did the best book blurb."<ref name=nyt1987>"An Upset at the Book Awards", Edwin McDowell, ''The New York Times'', November 10, 1987, page C13.</ref> The fixed number five finalists was retained through 2012,<ref name=process>National Book Foundation: Awards: [http://www.nationalbook.org/nba_process.html "How the National Book Awards Work"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110609202556/http://www.nationalbook.org/nba_process.html |date=2011-06-09 }}. Retrieved 2012-01-05.</ref> while the number of book categories has doubled with the addition of [[National Book Award for Poetry|Poetry]] in 1991 and [[National Book Award for Young People's Literature|Young People's Literature]] in 1996.<ref name=winners/> Beginning with 2013, the Foundation announced there would be a "longlist" of 10 titles in each of the four categories in September (40 titles), followed by a "finalist" list of 5 titles in October (20 titles), and then the winners in November (4 titles).<ref name=2013change/> In 2018 a fifth award category was announced, the [[National Book Award for Translated Literature]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/books/the-globalization-of-the-national-book-awards.html |title=The Globalization of the National Book Awards |work=[[The New York Times]] |author=Alexandra Alter |date=January 31, 2018 |access-date=February 1, 2018 |archive-date=November 15, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181115154207/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/books/the-globalization-of-the-national-book-awards.html |url-status=live }}</ref> It is for living translators and authors and for fiction and non-fiction. The foundation previously gave a translation award from 1967-1983, but did not require the author to be living and was for fiction only.

In 2024, the National Book Foundation announced the awards would no longer require U.S. citizenship for eligibility, following a similar decision the [[Pulitzer Prizes]] had made in 2023.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Alter |first1=Alexandra |title=The National Book Awards Opens Up to Writers Who Are Not U.S. Citizens |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/books/the-national-book-awards-non-us-citizens.html |access-date=19 February 2024 |work=The New York Times |date=15 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Stewart |first1=Sophia |title=National Book Awards Expand Eligibility to Non–U.S. Citizens |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/awards-and-prizes/article/94343-national-book-awards-expand-eligibility-to-non-u-s-citizens.html |access-date=19 February 2024 |work=Publishers Weekly |date=15 February 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Evans |first1=Nia T. |title=The National Book Awards Finally Expands Eligibility Rules to Include Non-Citizens |url=https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/the-national-book-awards-finally-expands-eligibility-rules-to-include-non-citizens/ |access-date=19 February 2024 |work=Mother Jones |date=15 February 2024}}</ref>