2025-2026 Nebula Award Winners
Attention Dragon Slayers and Galactic Gurus! If you love science fiction, fantasy or speculative fiction that envisions how our future might unfold, then it’s high time you checked out the Nebula Awards®. This prestigious book award is presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. It was first introduced in 1966, and today, more than 2,000 top writers vote for the year’s best novels, novellas and short stories. Poetry and comics were introduced in 2025, and the association also issues a lifetime achievement award. Let’s check out some of the nominees and winners from the 2025 Nebula Awards®, which were announced on June 6th, 2026.
Best Novel
Winner: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
by Stephen Graham Jones
Selected as One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of the Year - A Barack Obama Summer Read - Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel - Locus Award for Horror - Libby Award for Best Horror - Los Angeles Times Book Prize Award Finalist
The New York Times bestseller and "horror masterpiece" (NPR) from Stephen Graham Jones--the master of modern horror--is a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
When We Were Real
by Daryl Gregory
From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.
JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it's the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America's Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier--right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.
Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There's a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it's their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last--a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar--with everyone barreling toward the tour's iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.
When We Were Real is "an addictive thriller packed with winning characters and big, brilliant ideas" (Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Bright Sword and The Magicians trilogy) and an exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.
Katabasis (Standard Edition)
by R F Kuang
Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor's soul--perhaps at the cost of their own.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero's descent to the underworld
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she's going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. ...
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don't even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn't always the answer, and there's something in Alice and Peter's past that could forge them into the perfect allies ... or lead to their doom.
Death of the Author (Deluxe Limited Edition)
by Nnedi Okorafor
THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER: Recommended by New York Times Book Review - People - NPR - Rolling Stone - Los Angeles Times - Reader's Digest - and more!
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative--a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human in a compelling work of speculative fiction. The future of storytelling is here.
Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister's lavish Caribbean wedding, she's unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It's a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.
When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey--one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu's novel, a true book-within-a-book, will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
A story that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this literary fiction novel is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.
The Incandescent
by Emily Tesh
Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.
Walden is good at her job--no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It's her responsibility to keep her school with its 600 students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it's possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from--is herself.
Sour Cherry
by Natalia Theodoridou
Winner, 2026 LOCUS Award for Best First Novel - Named a Best Book by Chicago Review of Books, Lithub, GoodReads and Ms. Magazine - A Best Book of Summer by Barnes & Noble
"A murder ballad sung in a dark room―it's slow, haunting and strangely beautiful." ―The New York Times Book Review
The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord's baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy--until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.
Natalia Theodoridou's haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.
Wearing the Lion
by John Wiswell
"This novel effortlessly ascends to the heights of Mount Olympus. Tough and tender and bittersweet. Wearing the Lion establishes Wiswell firmly on the new fantasy landscape." – T. Kingfisher, Hugo Award-winning author of Nettle & Bone
Sometimes a goddess's worst enemy is her biggest fan.
For fans of the Odyssey and ancient Greek mythology: Heracles, hero of Greece, dedicates all his feats to the goddess Hera. If only he knew that his very face is an insult to her ... as he is yet another child that Hera's dipshit husband, Zeus, had out of wedlock.
"Auntie Hera" loathes every minute of Heracles' devotion, until she snaps and causes an unspeakably tragic accident: the death of Heracles' children. Plunged into grief and desperate for revenge, Heracles is determined to find the god that did this.
Wracked with guilt and desperate to save face, Hera distracts Heracles with monster-slaying quests, only to find that he is too traumatized to enact more violence. Instead, Heracles cares for the Nemean lion, bonds with the Lernaean hydra, and heeds the Ceryneian hind.
Each challenge adds a new monster to Heracles' newfound family. A family that just might lay siege to Mount Olympus.
Best Novella
Winner: The River Has Roots
by Amal El-Mohtar
A Locus and Nebula Award Winner for Best Novella! A Hugo Award finalist! - An Indie Next and LibraryReads Pick!
The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.
"Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath."
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family's latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters' bond but also their lives will be at risk…
Disgraced Return of the Kap's Needle
by Renan Bernardo
In 2144 AD, the generation ship Kap's Needle left Earth to settle a new world. It all went wrong. Now, two years into a desperate return trip, the ship's biospheres are collapsing and oxygen is nearly depleted. Life Support Manager Reva is now little more than a tax collector, deciding who gets to breathe. When Captain Horvat launches a corruption purge to cover his own failures, Reva knows she's next. To protect her son, she must do the unthinkable: trust First Officer Torres, the woman who ruined her life, and help bring down the captain no matter how many innocent lives it costs. BONUS CONTENT includes two short stories by the author: "A Lifeline of Silk" and “Callis Praedictionem.”
The Death of Mountains
by Jordan Kurella
The latest novella by Nebula finalist Jordan Kurella is a moving allegorical tale. As mankind continues to hurt the planet, leaving us with scarred lands, stories like The Death of Mountains are more meaningful than ever.
When the Death of Mountains came for us, we had been aching for a long time. There is so much loss in being a mountain; it is a terribly long time to live. Yet something awoke within us when they arrived, their face a stone skull, their hands' obsidian bones that cracked and crackled like fracking. It made us hurt to hear their earthquake step across the ground as they arrived. Their breath was like coal dust, the stuff their cloak was made from. They left a trail of oil behind them as they walked. When they spoke, their breath was hot, volcanic; it made us wither at first. We, however, are a middling hill of the Appalachians. And we have seen much worse. Far worse than death.
The Death of Mountains says, “Plundered Mountain, it's time to go.”
And we say, “We are not ready, Death. We have too much yet to see.”
Automatic Noodle
by Annalee Newitz
A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.
An instant USA Today and indie bestseller!
Indie Next pick Library Reads pick Best of the Year at Elle, Gizmodo, Reactor, Library Journal, and more!
You don't have to eat food to know the way to a city's heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food--the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around--for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they'll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other--and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn't built for them.
But Not Too Bold
by Hache Pueyo
The Shape of Water meets Mexican Gothic in this sapphic monster romance novella wrapped in gothic fantasy trappings
The old keeper of the keys is dead, and the creature who ate her is the volatile Lady of the Capricious House--Anatema, an enormous humanoid spider with a taste for laudanum and human brides.
Dália, the old keeper's protégée, must take up her duties, locking and unlocking the little drawers in which Anatema keeps her memories. And if she can unravel the crime that led to her predecessor's execution, Dália might just be able to survive long enough to grow into her new role.
But there's a gaping hole in Dália's plan that she refuses to see: Anatema cannot resist a beautiful woman, and she eventually devours every single bride that crosses her path.
Best Novelette
Winner: Uncertain Sons and Other Stories
by Thomas Ha
LOCUS AWARD WINNER - NEBULA AWARD WINNER - PHILIP K. DICK AWARD SPECIAL CITATION - BRAM STOKER AWARD - BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION AWARD FINALIST - IGNYTE AWARD FINALIST - NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST NEW HORROR 2025
Uncertain Sons is a startling and masterful collection exploring familial love and trauma; societal and technological anxieties; identity and class; and alternate near-future irrealities. Sharp, incisive, imaginative, and visionary, Thomas Ha's debut heralds the arrival of a vital new voice.
“You! Yes, you! You need this book! The stories in Uncertain Sons already feel like classics of the uncanny. As inventive as Ray Bradbury, as unsettling as Thomas Ligotti or Carmen Maria Machado, Ha knows how to produce that peculiar, pleasurable, creeping sense of wrongness and dislocation so particular to weird horror. I am such a fan of Thomas Ha's writing-and I expect that you will be, too.” -Kelly Link, Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Book of Love and Get in Trouble
Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and YA Fiction
Winner: Into the Wild Magic
by Michelle Knudsen
From New York Times best-selling author Michelle Knudsen comes a pitch-perfect fantasy about adolescent girlhood--navigating friendship and trust, owning your gifts, and becoming the hero of your own story.
Eleven-year-old Bevvy spends her time avoiding other kids, playing with her neighbor's kittens, and escaping into her fantasy novels. When new girl Cat arrives at school, Bevvy thinks she may finally have found a friend, until Cat provokes Bevvy's worst tormentor and leaves her alone to deal with the consequences. Later, on Bevvy's doorstep, Cat's apology is cut short when a car with dark windows rolls up. Bolting into a nearby wood with Bevvy in tow, Cat proceeds to open a hole, in the air, just in time. Bevvy knows magic when she sees it, the kind in books, but the world the girls escape to--teeming with unicorns, sorcerers, and dragons--is shockingly, exhilaratingly real. It's a world at war. Those who wield wild magic, in tune with nature, are pitted against dark sorcerers. As Bevvy's role in the struggle grows, and her confidence with it, can she trust Cat to support her? Can she trust herself not to run? An acclaimed author builds a breathtaking and emotionally resonant world where magic and monsters are real and friendship and risk go hand in hand.
Gemini Rising
by Jonathan Brazee
After being instrumental in saving the citizens of Arcadia during the Krackle invasion, identical twins Nika and Rika Ingersoll are offered appointments to the Regency's Uniform Services Academy as midshipmen. Eager to move on into adult life, they are sworn in and board a luxury liner for a relaxing voyage to Freedom Station before facing the rigors of Plebe Indoc.
Only sometimes lightning really does strike twice.
When seemingly pirates take over the ship, and the passengers face an uncertain-but assuredly horrible-fate, it's up to Rika and Nika, along with a handful of their fellow mids and cadets, to somehow figure a way out of their mess.
Against all odds, they managed it before, but is asking them to save the day again too much?
There's no room for failure. They may not be trained yet, but they've already sworn their oaths, and the lives of over 2,000 of their fellow citizens are at stake.
Read Gemini Rising now to see if the twins can somehow pull another rabbit out of their hats and save the day.
Wishing Well, Wishing Well
by Jubilee Cho
The five princesses of Bellarossa have lost their parents and must now abide under the control of the man responsible. But they have their art. They have each other. And still, they hold on to hope. They do what they can to ease the suffering of their kingdom under an unfeeling King and his cruel Admiral. But when a mysterious Renegade Mage arrives with powers of skill and magic, perhaps-perhaps, there is more that can be done.
Goblin Girl
by K. A. Mielke
For 12 years, Gertrude has been the only goblin in Pinnec Hill. The adopted daughter of the Captain of the Guard, she tries her hardest to live a normal life, ignoring the looks of disgust-and the rocks-thrown her way. But when an invading fleet of airships brings a goblin army crashing through the city gates, she understands why everyone fears her. The leader of this army is Wrendell, a powerful goblin sorceress, who burns the city to the ground in pursuit of one thing: the human princess, Beatrix. Gertrude's father tasks her with rescuing Princess Beatrix. With the aid of a cursed knight and a talking tree, Gertrude will encounter trolls and dragons, discover the true history of her banished people, and-as if that weren't enough-struggle with her own blossoming crush on a princess who doesn't trust her. No one expects much of a measly goblin girl, but Gertrude may be the only person who can save the kingdom.
Sunrise on the Reaping (the Hunger Games)
by Suzanne Collins
The unforgettable fifth book in the Hunger Games series: Haymitch's story. Feature film scheduled for November 2026.
#1 USA Today Bestseller - #1 New York Times Bestseller - #1 Indie Bestseller - #1 Publishers Weekly Bestseller - A New York Times Editors' Choice
When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for? As the day dawns on the 50th annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.
Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight ... and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
The Tower (audio version)
by David Anaxagoras - Christopher Gebauer
When 12-year-old Kolby wakes up in an empty white room, he has no memory, no clothes, and no idea where he is. He soon discovers he's one of a dozen kids living in an extravagant penthouse atop the tallest tower in the city. Adults are nowhere to be found, and, like Kolby, all the kids are missing their memories. The kids in the tower spend their time scaling the climbing wall, riding a waterslide into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or playing video games on the 105-inch 8K video screen. A mysterious "manifesting room" magically provides both food and rewards. They have virtually everything a kid could want.
Except a way out.
None of the kids show much concern for each other, let alone new arrival Kolby. Haunted by fragments of memories he can't quite understand, Kolby just wants to escape the penthouse and go home.
Unfortunately, the only way to get out is by participating in the tower's enigmatic game--a kind of scavenger hunt that takes place in the surrounding city. Players are chosen for teams by the tower's apparent leader, Gen. But beneath her glib detachment, Gen harbors a secret--she knows more about the tower than she lets on, including the dark, inevitable truth about all their fates. When game time arrives, it looks like Kolby has found his ticket out of the tower, but escape isn't so simple.
Other 2025 Nebula Award Winners
Short Story: Laser Eyes Ain't Everything by Effie Seiberg
Poetry: The World to Come by Jennifer Hudak
Comic: The Killing Stone, Mary Shelley's School for Monsters Book 2 by Jessica Maison
Game: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 RPG Video Game
Dramatic Presentation: Murderbot: Season One (Apple TV+)