Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Edition

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.

Each year one of my favorite lists is the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 list. It's not that I think you have to be young to be a great writer, but I love how writers who have won National Book Awards and even some who have have this honor get to pick the new class each year. 

More about the honor and its mission here. From that page:

In 2006, the National Book Foundation established the 5 Under 35 prize to recognize outstanding debut fiction writers under the age of 35. 5 Under 35 has identified some of the most celebrated young writers working today. Previous honorees include Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Brit Bennett, Akwaeke Emezi, Angela Flournoy, Phil Klay, Valeria Luiselli, C.E. Morgan, Téa Obreht, ZZ Packer, Karen Russell, Justin Torres, Bryan Washington, Claire Vaye Watkins, Tiphanie Yanique, and Charles Yu. 

5 Under 35 honorees are selected by authors who have been recognized by either the National Book Awards or 5 Under 35 itself. To be eligible for the prize, writers must have published their first and only book of fiction—either a story collection or a novel—within the last five years. Honorees are chosen at the discretion of the selectors; as such, publishers cannot nominate an honoree or submit a book for consideration.

This year’s honorees are Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, author of Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare (Bloomsbury); Anika Jade Levy, author of Flat Earth (Catapult); Carrie R. Moore, author of Make Your Way Home (Tin House); Maggie Su, author of Blob: A Love Story (Harper); and Stephanie Wambugu, author of Lonely Crowds (Little, Brown).

Links for the titles line up with the links provided on the landing page. 

I love this list for its RA Service implications and for what you can learn and use from the backlist. Below I explain why you should like and use this list all year long too.

First, this list is awesome. It is not just the young authors who are being highlighted, the established authors who selected each of them are also a great resource. You get 10 suggested authors from this 5 person list. 

Which leads to second, the established authors are your conversation starter and readalike stepping stone. So when you see: 

2026 5 Under 25 nominee Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su nominated by Charles Yu, the author of four books, including Interior Chinatown, winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. In 2007, he was selected to be a 5 Under 35 Honoree by Richard Powers. 

You are literally seeing how this award works. Yu was selected by Richard Powers, he went on to sin the National Book Award, and now he is in turn picking a new author to keep the cycle going. Proven authors suggesting new authors.

Now you can confidently suggest Maggie Su's Blob to fans of Charles Yu and Richard Powers. This fits in with one of my "5 Resources You Cannot Live Without" from my 10 Rules of Basic RA page-- Author Recs of Other Authors. Click here for a longer post where I explain why authors recommending other authors is a near perfect readalike option. 

Third, the backlist is amazing. Seriously. Even more amazing than backlists usually are, and many of you know how excited I get about the backlist in general. As you can see from just the point above this one, I got 2 backlist authors from one current nominee. But wait, there's more.

From the landing page for this year's winners, you can easy go backward, year by year, with a drop down menu. I scanned many of the lists and WOW, did they identify some amazing authors who are household names now.  Yes, there are a few who haven't broke through, but it is amazing how many have. You can easily use the backlist list of winners to help readers identify good under the radar reads, especially for your literary fiction and book club selection readers. You can also make a display of current and past winners.

I know some people will say, Becky these authors are emerging and at my library I can barely afford to get the established authors. But it would be a mistake to ignore these "emerging voices" for many reasons-- 3 of which I gave you here. 

Don't sleep on new voices. They will have wide appeal on their own AND you can use establish  authors to match them with readers through displays, verbal suggestions, or even by pairing them as the website does. 

Today's new voices are our future best sellers. And some of these authors, like Su with her novel, Blob: A Love Story, are already well on their way.