A Decade of Bias in National Book Awards?
On September 22, 2026, the New York Times published a scathing indictment by Times Opinion Writer Bret Stephens of the cultural politicization of the National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prizes for music and drama. Stephens alleged that both awards over the past decade or so have been dominated by authors who are “minorities” or who are writing about “minorities.” Although he applies that term broadly to encompass race, gender, immigrant status and other categories, the books he cites leave no doubt about the non-mainstream status of the authors and the subjects.
His stats are solid. As he puts it, “By my count, in the past decade, nine of the 10 winners of the National Book Award for fiction belonged to a minority group. In the nonfiction category, 10 of 10. Bluntly, the National Book Award has become a D.E.I. checklist: Only authors with preferred identities, preferred topics and preferred politics stand any realistic chance of winning.”
He adds, “Much the same goes for the Pulitzer Prizes. Of the past 10 years’ worth of winners for music and drama, nearly all have been minorities. Whether or not the winners are themselves minorities, they almost invariably win for work about minorities.”
Stephens claims “The bald politicization of the nation’s highest literary prizes is achieving several forms of injustice at once.” As he says:
“It is devaluing the prizes themselves.”
“It is deforming and hollowing out literary culture in America.”
“And it is turning off a generation of readers hungry for literature judged only on the merits of the work itself, regardless of the identity of the author and free from the tedium of political orthodoxy.”
As a white, straight male author who has watched this trend develop over the past decade, it’s easy for me to applaud Stephens for criticizing these results, which would have unofficially ignored some of the best writers of the last hundred years if the same “woke” or “affirmative action” standards had been applied to them or their works.
At the same time, I am torn by the reality that literature can and should be a force for confronting evil and promoting change. As the author's notes in my four novels make clear, I believe that good literature should challenge us and make us think. “All the King’s Men” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” were important examples in my early education.
Still, I see a difference between having the editorial and business fortitude to publish an important work despite its controversial subject matter and having the audacious paternalism to dictate that every author and subject must meet the publisher’s or award's unstated political litmus test.
Bret Stephens deserves credit for calling out the injustice he sees in the last decade of national book awards. The New York Times deserves kudos for publishing his critique. The pendulum of social and political activism swung too far. It discriminated against mainstream authors and topics. It sold books, but at the expense of ignoring a broader market. Ironically, it may have driven some readers away from reading and into watching Fox News. Authors, readers and society in general deserve better.
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