# NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction

This article lists the winners and nominees for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction. Walter Mosley holds the record for most wins in this category, with three.

## Winners and nominees
### 1990s

Award winners: 1996, 1999 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 1996 | Children of the Dust | Clancy Carlile | Winner |
| 1999 | | | |
| 1999 | Mama Flora's Family | Alex Haley and David Stevens | Winner |

### 2000s

Award winners and finalists, 2001–2009 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2001 | For the Love of Money | Omar Tyree | Winner |
| 2002 | A Day Late and a Dollar Short | Terry McMillan | Winner |
| 2003 | Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea | Nikki Giovanni | Winner |
| 2003 | A Love of My Own | E. Lynn Harris | Finalist |
| 2003 | The Emperor of Ocean Park | Stephen L. Carter | Finalist |
| 2003 | Thieves' Paradise | Eric Jerome Dickey | Finalist |
| 2003 | The Bondswoman's Narrative | Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Finalist |
| 2004 | Love | Toni Morrison | Winner |
| 2004 | The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni | Nikki Giovanni | Finalist |
| 2004 | Diary of a Groupie | Omar Tyree | Finalist |
| 2004 | A Poem Traveled Down My Arm: Poems and Drawings | Alice Walker | Finalist |
| 2004 | The Other Woman | Eric Jerome Dickey | Finalist |
| 2005 | Woman, Thou Art Loosed! The Novel | Bishop T. D. Jakes | Winner |
| 2006 | Breaking the Cycle | Zane | Winner |
| 2006 | 72 Hour Hold | Bebe Moore Campbell | Finalist |
| 2006 | Cinnamon Kiss | Walter Mosley | Finalist |
| 2006 | Fledgling | Octavia E. Butler | Finalist |
| 2006 | Genevieve | Eric Jerome Dickey | Finalist |
| 2007 | Baby Brother's Blues | Pearl Cleage | Winner |
| 2007 | After | Marita Golden | Finalist |
| 2007 | All Aunt Hagar's Children | Edward P. Jones | Finalist |
| 2007 | Fortunate Son | Walter Mosley | Finalist |
| 2007 | Wizard of the Crow | Ngugi wa Thiongo | Finalist |
| 2008 | Blonde Faith | Walter Mosley | Winner |
| 2008 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Díaz | Finalist |
| 2008 | Cion | Zakes Mda | Finalist |
| 2008 | Knots | Nuruddin Farah | Finalist |
| 2008 | New England White | Stephen L. Carter | Finalist |
| 2009 | In the Night of the Heat | Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due, and Steven Barnes | Winner |
| 2009 | Blood Colony | Tananarive Due | Finalist |
| 2009 | Going Down South | Bonnie Glover | Finalist |
| 2009 | Just Too Good to Be True | E. Lynn Harris | Finalist |
| 2009 | Song Yet Sung | James McBride | Finalist |

### 2010s

Award winners and finalists, 2010–2019 :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2010 | The Long Fall | Walter Mosley | Winner |
| 2010 | Basketball Jones | E. Lynn Harris | Finalist |
| 2010 | Before I Forget | Leonard Pitts | Finalist |
| 2010 | Life Is Short But Wide | J. California Cooper | Finalist |
| 2010 | The Book of Night Women | Marlon James | Finalist |
| 2011 | Getting to Happy | Terry McMillan | Winner |
| 2011 | A Taste of Honey | Jabari Asim | Finalist |
| 2011 | Glorious | Bernice L. McFadden | Finalist |
| 2011 | Till You Hear from Me | Pearl Cleage | Finalist |
| 2011 | Wench | Dolen Perkins-Valdez | Finalist |
| 2012 | Say Amen, Again | ReShonda Tate Billingsley | Winner |
| 2012 | Boundaries | Elizabeth Nunez | Finalist |
| 2012 | A Silken Thread | Brenda Jackson | Finalist |
| 2012 | Silver Sparrow | Tayari Jones | Finalist |
| 2012 | The Plot Against Hip Hop | Nelson George | Finalist |
| 2013 | The Reverend's Wife | Kimberla Lawson Roby | Winner |
| 2013 | Destiny's Divas | Victoria Christopher Murray | Finalist |
| 2013 | The Secret She Kept | ReShonda Tate Billingsley | Finalist |
| 2013 | Silent Cry | Dywane Birch | Finalist |
| 2013 | A Wish and a Prayer | Beverly Jenkins | Finalist |
| 2014 | Anybody's Daughter | Pamela Samuels Young | Winner |
| 2014 | A Deeper Love Inside: The Porscha Santiaga Story | Sister Souljah | Finalist |
| 2014 | Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery | Walter Mosley | Finalist |
| 2014 | Never Say Never | Victoria Christopher Murray | Finalist |
| 2014 | Who Asked You? | Terry McMillan | Finalist |
| 2015 | A Wanted Woman | Eric Jerome Dickey | Winner |
| 2015 | An Untamed State | Roxane Gay | Finalist |
| 2015 | Another Woman’s Man | Shelly Ellis | Finalist |
| 2015 | Momma: Gone | Nina Foxx | Finalist |
| 2015 | The Prodigal Son | Kimberla Lawson Roby | Finalist |
| 2016 | Stand Your Ground | Victoria Christopher Murray | Winner |
| 2016 | Driving the King | Ravi Howard | Finalist |
| 2016 | Ghost Summer: Stories | Tananarive Due | Finalist |
| 2016 | Mama's Boy | ReShonda Tate Billingsley | Finalist |
| 2016 | Under the Udala Trees | Chinelo Okparanta | Finalist |
| 2017 | The Book of Harlan | Bernice McFadden | Winner |
| 2017 | Another Brooklyn | Jacqueline Woodson | Finalist |
| 2017 | The Illegal | Lawrence Hill | Finalist |
| 2017 | The Mother | Yvvette Edwards | Finalist |
| 2017 | The Underground Railroad | Colson Whitehead | Finalist |
| 2018 | The Annotated African American Folktales | Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Maria Tatar | Winner |
| 2018 | Little Fires Everywhere | Celeste Ng | Finalist |
| 2018 | No One Is Coming to Save Us | Stephanie Powell Watts | Finalist |
| 2018 | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Jesmyn Ward | Finalist |
| 2018 | The Wide Circumference of Love | Marita Golden | Finalist |
| 2019 | An American Marriage | Tayari Jones | Winner |
| 2019 | Better Late Than Never | Kimberla Lawson Roby | Finalist |
| 2019 | Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther? Prose Novel | Jesse James Holland, Jr. | Finalist |
| 2019 | Envy | Victoria Christopher Murray | Finalist |
| 2019 | They Come in All Colors | Malcolm Hansen | Finalist |

### 2020s

Award winners and finalists, 2020–present :
| Year | Book | Author | Result |
| 2020 | The Revisioners | Margaret Wilkerson Sexton | Winner |
| 2020 | New Daughters of Africa | Margaret Busby | Finalist |
| 2020 | Out of Darkness, Shining Light | Petina Gappah | Finalist |
| 2020 | Red at the Bone | Jacqueline Woodson | Finalist |
| 2020 | The Water Dancer | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Finalist |
| 2021 | The Awkward Black Man | Walter Mosley | Winner |
| 2021 | Lakewood | Megan Giddings | Finalist |
| 2021 | The Vanishing Half | Brit Bennett | Finalist |
| 2021 | Riot Baby | Tochi Onyebuchi | Finalist |
| 2021 | Black Bottom Saints | Alice Randall | Finalist |
| 2022 | Long Division | Kiese Laymon | Winner |
| 2022 | Harlem Shuffle | Colson Whitehead | Finalist |
| 2022 | Libertie | Kaitlyn Greenidge | Finalist |
| 2022 | The Man Who Lived Underground | Richard Wright | Finalist |
| 2022 | The Perishing | Natashia Deón | Finalist |
| 2023 | Take My Hand | Dolen Perkins-Valdez | Winner |
| 2023 | Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction | Natashia Deón | Finalist |
| 2023 | Light Skin Gone to Waste | Toni Ann Johnson | Finalist |
| 2023 | The Keeper | Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes | Finalist |
| 2023 | You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty | Akwaeke Emezi | Finalist |
| 2024 | Family Lore | Elizabeth Acevedo | Winner |
| 2024 | Everything Is Not Enough | Lola Akinmade Åkerström | Finalist |
| 2024 | House of Eve | Sadeqa Johnson | Finalist |
| 2024 | The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store | James McBride | Finalist |
| 2024 | Let Us Descend | Jesmyn Ward | Finalist |