This week’s special episode celebrates all things Kirkus Prize.
Live from New York—this Wednesday, October 8—we’ll be fêting the finalists of the 2025 Kirkus Prizes at our 12th annual awards ceremony.
Created to honor decades of honest, industry-first reviews, the Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world. That’s three awards of $50,000—in fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature—given each year to creators whose outstanding work stands to make a lasting mark on literature. This year’s prizes honor books published between November 1, 2024 and October 31, 2025 that received starred reviews from our critics.
On this special episode of Fully Booked, we’re joined by Kirkus Prize for Fiction juror Thérèse Purcell Nielsen to discuss her recent article, “What I Learned as a Kirkus Prize Juror." Neilsen, a fiction reviewer for Kirkus, is a former Head of Reference and adult fiction selector at the Huntington Public Library. We talk about her best practices for rigorous reading, the importance of ergonomics, and the elements of literary excellence. Then editors Laurie Muchnick, John McMurtrie, Mahnaz Dar, and Laura Simeon take us behind the scenes of this year’s prize process.
The 2025 Kirkus Prizes will be presented in a ceremony emceed by editor-in-chief Tom Beer. If you can’t join us in person, please visit our for the livestream, beginning at 7 p.m. EDT.
THE 2025 KIRKUS PRIZE FINALISTS:
FICTION:
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hogarth)
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy (Mariner Books)
Isola by Allegra Goodman (Dial Press)
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Knopf)
The Slip by Lucas Schaefer (Simon & Schuster)
Flesh by David Szalay (Scribner)
NONFICTION:
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson (Doubleday)
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst (Riverhead)
America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin (Penguin Press)
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry (Ecco/HarperCollins)
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Scribner)
YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
Picture Books:
Island Storm by Brian Floca, illus. by Sydney Smith (Neal Porter/Holiday House)
Everybelly by Thao Lam (Groundwood)
Middle Grade:
The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze by Derrick Barnes (Viking)
John the Skeleton by Triinu Laan, illus. by Marja-Liisa Plats, trans. by Adam Cullen (Yonder)
Young Adult:
Butterfly Heart by Moa Backe Åstot, trans. by Agnes Broomé (Em Querido)
Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal and the Lost Dream of Jonestown by Candace Fleming (Anne Schwartz/Random)
THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:
The Tale of Mr. Crocodile Takes Tea by Lance Lee, illus. by Cilla Hunkeler
Stormbringer by G.R. Boden
Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.
