# Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award

The Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award is an annual literary prize presented by Barnes & Noble for author's debut books.
It was founded with the aim of recognizing and celebrating exceptional emerging authors who demonstrate outstanding talent and promise in their writing.

## Honorees

Early versions of the award were presented as two awards, one for fiction and one for nonfiction, with second and third place recipients. More recent editions present a single award winner with a list of finalists.

### 1997–2019

Award honorees, 1997–2019 :
| Year | Category | Author | Title | Result |
| 1995 | Fiction | Chang-rae Lee | Native Speaker | Won |
| 1996 | Fiction | Elizabeth McCracken | The Giant's House | Won |
| 1996 | Nonfiction | Anthony Doerr | The Shell Collector | Won |
| 1997 | Fiction | J. Robert Lennon | The Light of Falling Stars | 1 |
| 2001 | Fiction | Manil Suri | The Death of Vishnu | 1 |
| 2004 | Fiction | Monica Ali | Brick Lane | 1 |
| 2004 | Fiction | Zoë Heller | What Was She Thinking? | 2 |
| 2004 | Fiction | Julie Orringer | How to Breath Underwater | 3 |
| 2004 | Nonfiction | Jay Griffiths | A Sideways Look at Time | 1 |
| 2004 | Nonfiction | Christina Lamb | The Sewing Circles of Herat | 2 |
| 2004 | Nonfiction | Floyd Skloot | In the Shadow of Memory | 3 |
| 2005 | Fiction | Uzodinma Iweala | Beasts of No Nation | 1 |
| 2005 | Fiction | Kitty Fitzgerald | Pigtopia | 2 |
| 2005 | Fiction | Catherine Tudish | Tenney's Landing | 3 |
| 2005 | Nonfiction | Nathaniel Fick | One Bullet Away | 1 |
| 2005 | Nonfiction | Martin Moran | The Tricky Part | 2 |
| 2005 | Nonfiction | Louise Brown | The Dancing Girls of Lahore | 3 |
| 2006 | Fiction | Ben Fountain | Brief Encounters with Che Guevara | 1 |
| 2006 | Fiction | O. Z. Livaneli | Bliss | 2 |
| 2006 | Fiction | Sam Savage | Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife | 3 |
| 2006 | Nonfiction | Eric Blehm | The Last Season | 1 |
| 2006 | Nonfiction | Daniel Mendelsohn | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million | 2 |
| 2006 | Nonfiction | Marilyn Johnson | The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries | 3 |
| 2007 | Fiction | Joshua Ferris | Then We Came to the End | 1 |
| 2007 | Fiction | Matthew Eck | The Farther Shore | 2 |
| 2007 | Fiction | Vendela Vida | Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name | 3 |
| 2007 | Nonfiction | Kate Braestrup | Here If You Need Me | 1 |
| 2007 | Nonfiction | Elizabeth Samet | Soldier's Heart | 2 |
| 2007 | Nonfiction | Yaroslav Trofimov | The Siege of Mecca | 3 |
| 2008 | Fiction | Gin Phillips | The Well and the Mine | 1 |
| 2008 | Fiction | Benjamin Taylor | The Book of Getting Even | 2 |
| 2008 | Fiction | Zachary Lazar | Sway | 3 |
| 2008 | Nonfiction | David Sheff | Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction | 1 |
| 2008 | Nonfiction | Eric Weiner | The Geography of Bliss | 2 |
| 2008 | Nonfiction | Nia Wyn | Blue Sky July | 3 |
| 2009 | Fiction | Victor Lodato | Mathilda Savitch | 1 |
| 2009 | Fiction | Barbara Johnson | More of this World or Maybe Another | 2 |
| 2009 | Fiction | C. E. Morgan | All the Living | 3 |
| 2009 | Nonfiction | Dave Cullen | Columbine | 1 |
| 2009 | Nonfiction | Toby Lester | The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map | 2 |
| 2009 | Nonfiction | Neil White | In the Sanctuary of Outcasts | 3 |
| 2010 | Fiction | Kim Echlin | The Disappeared | 1 |
| 2010 | Fiction | Eric Puchner | Model Home | 2 |
| 2010 | Fiction | Nic Pizzolatto | Galveston | 3 |
| 2010 | Nonfiction | David R. Dow | The Autobiography of an Execution | 1 |
| 2010 | Nonfiction | Rebecca Skloot | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | 2 |
| 2010 | Nonfiction | Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | 3 |
| 2011 | Fiction | Scott O'Connor | Untouchable | 1 |
| 2011 | Fiction | Alice LaPlante | Turn of Mind | 2 |
| 2011 | Fiction | Alan Heathcock | Volt | 3 |
| 2011 | Nonfiction | Michael Levy | Kosher Chinese | 1 |
| 2011 | Nonfiction | Annia Ciezadlo | Day of Honey | 2 |
| 2011 | Nonfiction | Joshua Cody | [sic] | 3 |
| 2012 | Fiction | Amanda Coplin | The Orchardist | 1 |
| 2012 | Fiction | Karen Thompson Walker | The Age of Miracles | 2 |
| 2012 | Fiction | Eowyn Ivey | The Snow Child | 3 |
| 2012 | Nonfiction | Cheryl Strayed | Wild | 1 |
| 2012 | Nonfiction | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers | 2 |
| 2012 | Nonfiction | Kristen Iversen | Full Body Burden | 3 |
| 2013 | Fiction | Anthony Marra | A Constellation of Vital Phenomena | 1 |
| 2013 | Fiction | NoViolet Bulawayo | We Need New Names | 2 |
| 2013 | Fiction | Rebecca Lee | Bobcat and Other Stories | 3 |
| 2013 | Nonfiction | Justin St. Germain | Son of a Gun | 1 |
| 2013 | Nonfiction | Sonali Deraniyagala | Wave | 2 |
| 2013 | Nonfiction | Domenica Ruta | With or Without You | 3 |
| 2014 | Fiction | Evie Wyld | All the Birds, Singing | 1 |
| 2014 | Fiction | Molly Antopol | The UnAmericans | 2 |
| 2014 | Fiction | Arna Bontemps Hemenway | Elegy on Kinderklavier | 3 |
| 2014 | Nonfiction | Bryce Andrews | Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West | 1 |
| 2014 | Nonfiction | Caitlin Doughty | Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory | 2 |
| 2014 | Nonfiction | Will Harlan | Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island | 3 |
| 2015 | Fiction | Mia Alvar | In the Country | 1 |
| 2015 | Fiction | Angela Flournoy | The Turner House | 2 |
| 2015 | Fiction | Sophie McManus | The Unfortunates | 3 |
| 2015 | Nonfiction | Jill Leovy | Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America | 1 |
| 2015 | Nonfiction | George Hodgman | Bettyville | 2 |
| 2015 | Nonfiction | Amy Ellis Nutt | Becoming Nicole | 3 |
| 2016 | Fiction | Abby Geni | The Lightkeepers | 1 |
| 2016 | Fiction | Yaa Gyasi | Homegoing | 2 |
| 2016 | Fiction | Jung Yun | Shelter | 3 |
| 2016 | Nonfiction | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | 1 |
| 2016 | Nonfiction | Hope Jahren | Lab Girl | 2 |
| 2016 | Nonfiction | Patrick Phillips | Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America | 3 |
| 2017 | Fiction | Patty Yumi Cottrell | Sorry to Disrupt the Peace | 1 |
| 2017 | Fiction | Megan Hunter | The End We Start From | 2 |
| 2017 | Fiction | Lisa Ko | The Leavers | 3 |
| 2017 | Nonfiction | Jessica Bruder | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | 1 |
| 2017 | Nonfiction | Leah Carroll | Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory and Murder | 2 |
| 2017 | Nonfiction | Michael Twitty | The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South | 3 |
| 2018 | Fiction | Paul Howarth | Only Killers and Thieves | 1 |
| 2018 | Fiction | Tommy Orange | There There | 2 |
| 2018 | Fiction | Fatima Farheen Mirza | A Place for Us | 3 |
| 2018 | Nonfiction | Kiese Laymon | Heavy | 1 |
| 2018 | Nonfiction | Shane Bauer | American Prison | 2 |
| 2018 | Nonfiction | Tara Westover | Educated | 3 |
| 2019 | Fiction | Claire Adam | The Golden Child | Won |
| 2019 | Fiction | Lydia Fitzpatrick | Lights All Night Long | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | Fiction | Ocean Vuong | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | Fiction | Regina Porter | The Travelers | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Damon Young | What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker | Won |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Saeed Jones | How We Fight for Our Lives | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Jaquira Díaz | Ordinary Girls | Shortlisted |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Jia Tolentino | Trick Mirror | Shortlisted |

### 2022–present

Award honorees, 2022–present :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2022 | Tess Gunty | The Rabbit Hutch | Won |
| 2022 | Louise Kennedy | Trespasses | Shortlisted |
| 2022 | Sequoia Nagamatsu | How High We Go in the Dark | Shortlisted |
| 2022 | Morgan Talty | Night of the Living Rez | Shortlisted |
| 2022 | Sarah Thankam Mathews | All This Could Be Different | Shortlisted |
| 2022 | Laura Warrell | Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm | Shortlisted |
| 2023 | Amanda Peters | The Berry Pickers | Won |
| 2023 | Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah | Chain-Gang All-Stars | Shortlisted |
| 2023 | John Manuel Arias | Where There Was Fire | Shortlisted |
| 2023 | Brinda Charry | The East Indian | Shortlisted |
| 2023 | Henry Hoke | Open Throat | Shortlisted |
| 2023 | Alice Winn | In Memoriam | Shortlisted |
| 2024 | Essie Chambers | Swift River | Won |
| 2024 | Kaveh Akbar | Martyr! | Shortlisted |
| 2024 | Tammy Armstrong | Pearly Everlasting | Shortlisted |
| 2024 | Abraham Chang | 888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers: A Novel | Shortlisted |
| 2024 | Lottie Hazell | Piglet | Shortlisted |
| 2024 | Elizabeth O'Connor | Whale Fall | Shortlisted |