The National Book Foundation announced today the 25 finalists for the 2025 National Book Awards. Seattle journalist Claudia Rowe, a former Seattle Times reporter who now sits on the paper’s editorial board, is a finalist for the nonfiction award for her book “Wards of the State.”
Publishers submitted 1,835 books for this year’s National Book Awards. Of those, 652 were nonfiction.
“I am just blown away,” Rowe said via email of the honor. “Among the hundreds of thousands of books published every year, many are brilliant. To be a finalist for the National Book Award signals something beyond that. It means the judges recognize the importance of confronting our long-overlooked foster care system, something that affects everyone who lives in this country, even if we don’t realize it.”
In a May interview with Rowe in The Seattle Times, writer Rebekah Denn called the book “an immersive, devastating look at foster children’s lives and a systemic pipeline to homelessness and prison.”
“I personally wanted to know, what does it feel like to be a kid on the street? What is that experience like? I wanted the reader to see through their eyes,” Rowe said in the May interview. “Beyond that, I did want to give voice to people who almost never have that experience of being heard.”
The National Book Awards were established in 1950 and feature the categories of young people’s literature, translated literature, poetry, nonfiction and fiction, plus two lifetime achievement awards. The 76th ceremony will take place on Nov. 19 at 5 p.m. PST. Register to watch at nationalbook.org/awards2025.
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