# Believer Book Award

Believer Book Award is an American literary award presented yearly by The Believer magazine to novels and story collections, nonfiction books or essay collections, poetry collections, and, beginning in 2021 (awarding to books published in 2020), works of graphic narrative the magazine's editors thought were the "strongest and most under-appreciated" of the year. A shortlist and longlist are announced for each genre, along with reader's favorites, then a final winner is selected by the magazine's editors. The inaugural award was in 2005 for books published in 2004.

## Winners and shortlist
### 2004–2018

The year below denotes when the books were published; the award is announced the following year. Thus below, the inaugural 2004 books were announced in early to mid-2005. From 2004 to 2018, a single award was presented. Beginning in 2019, awards were presented in categories.
Award winners and shortlists, 2004-2018 :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2004 | Sam Lipsyte | Home Land | Winner |
| 2004 | Lucy Ellmann | Dot in the Universe | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Francisco Goldman | The Divine Husband | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Michelle de Kretser | The Hamilton Case | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Selah Saterstrom | The Pink Institution | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Sesshu Foster | Atomik Aztex | Winner |
| 2005 | John Wray | Canaan's Tongue | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Tom Bissell | God Lives in St. Petersburg | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Trinie Dalton | Wide Eyed | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Aimee Bender | Willful Creatures | Shortlist |
| 2006 | Cormac McCarthy | The Road | Winner |
| 2007 | Tom McCarthy | Remainder | Winner |
| 2007 | Alain Mabanckou | African Psycho | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Joe Weisberg | An Ordinary Spy | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Elizabeth Hand | Generation Loss | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Jesse Ball | Samedi the Deafness | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Gerard Donovan | Sunless | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Selah Saterstrom | The Meat and Spirit Plan | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Lydie Salvayre | The Power of Flies | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Miranda Mellis | The Revisionist | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Steve Erickson | Zeroville | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Emily Perkins | Novel About My Wife | Winner |
| 2008 | Tod Wodicka | All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Shannon Burke | Black Flies | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Jim Krusoe | Girl Factory | Shortlist |
| 2008 | John Olson | Souls of Wind | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Toby Olson | Tampico | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Samantha Hunt | The Invention of Everything Else | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Mary Ruefle | The Most of It | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Percival Everett | I Am Not Sidney Poitier | Winner |
| 2009 | Mary Robison | One D.O.A., One on the Way | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Blake Butler | Scorch Atlas | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Christopher Miller | The Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Padgett Powell | The Interrogative Mood | Shortlist |
| 2010 | James Hynes | Next | Winner |
| 2010 | Kira Henehan | Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Paul Murray | Skippy Dies | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Danielle Dutton | Sprawl | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Grace Krilanovich | The Orange Eats Creeps | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Ben Lerner | Leaving the Atocha Station | Winner |
| 2011 | Helen DeWitt | Lightning Rods | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Lars Iyer | Spurious | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Jesse Ball | The Curfew | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Michelle Latiolais | Widow | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Tamara Faith Berger | Maidenhead | Winner |
| 2012 | Sergio De La Pava | A Naked Singularity | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Barbara Browning | I'm Trying to Reach You | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Karl Ove Knausgård | My Struggle | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Jim Krusoe | Parsifal | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Rebecca Lee | Bobcat and Other Stories | Winner |
| 2013 | Bennett Sims | A Questionable Shape | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Keith Ridgway | Hawthorn and Child | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Kiese Laymon | Long Division | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Fiona Maazel | Woke Up Lonely | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Ottessa Moshfegh | McGlue | Winner |
| 2014 | Valeria Luiselli | Faces in the Crowd | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Diane Cook | Man V. Nature | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Elizabeth McCracken | Thunderstruck and Other Stories | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Antoine Volodine | Writers | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Matthew Rohrer | The Others | Winner |
| 2017 | Leyna Krow | I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Andrew Durbin | MacArthur Park | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Jenny Zhang | Sour Heart | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Deepak Unnikrishnan | Temporary People | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Rita Bullwinkel | Belly Up | Winner |
| 2018 | Shelley Jackson | Riddance; Or: The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Hideo Yokoyama, trans. by Louise Heal Kawai | Seventeen | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Mathias Énard | Tell Them of Battles, Kings, | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Ben Passmore | Your Black Friend and Other Strangers | Shortlist |

### 2019–present

The year below denotes when the books were published; the award is announced the following year. Thus below, the inaugural 2004 books were announced in early to mid-2005. From 2004 to 2018, a single award was presented. Beginning in 2019, awards were presented in categories.
Award winners and shortlists, 2019–present :
| Year | Category | Author | Title | Result |
| 2019 | Fiction | Ebony Flowers | Hot Comb | Winner |
| 2019 | Fiction | Donatella Di Pietrantonio trans. by Ann Goldstein | A Girl Returned | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Fiction | Sarah Rose Etter | The Book of X | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Fiction | Adam Ehrlich Sachs | The Organs of Sense | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Fiction | Hebe Uhart, trans. by Maureen Shaughnessy | The Scent of Buenos Aires | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Trisha Low | Socialist Realism | Winner |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Emmanuel Carrère, trans. by John Lambert | 97,196 Words | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Andrea Long Chu | Females | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, trans. by Janet Hong | Grass | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Nonfiction | Heather Christle | The Crying Book | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Poetry | Deborah Landau | Soft Targets | Winner |
| 2019 | Poetry | Cameron Awkward-Rich | Dispatch | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Poetry | Steve Healey | Safe Houses I Have Known | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Poetry | Franny Choi | Soft Science | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Poetry | Christopher Kondrich | Valuing | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Fiction | Vigdis Hjorth, trans. by Charlotte Barslund | Long Live the Post Horn! | Winner |
| 2020 | Fiction | Souvankham Thammavongsa | How to Pronounce Knife | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Fiction | Lisa Robertson | The Baudelaire Fractal | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Fiction | Nathalie Léger | The White Dress | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Fiction | Peter Cameron | What Happens at Night | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Graphic Narrative | Jonathan Hill | Odessa | Winner |
| 2020 | Graphic Narrative | Vivian Chong and Georgia Webber | Dancing after TEN | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Graphic Narrative | Lawrence Lindell | From Truth with Truth | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Graphic Narrative | Gipi, trans. by Jaime Richards | One Story | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Graphic Narrative | Danny Noble | Shame Pudding: A Graphic Memoir | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Nonfiction | Ashon T. Crawley | The Lonely Letters | Winner |
| 2020 | Nonfiction | Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn | A Fish Growing Lungs | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Nonfiction | Emerson Whitney | Heaven | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Nonfiction | Namwali Serpell | Stranger Faces | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Nonfiction | Emily J. Lordi | The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Poetry | Yona Harvey | You Don’t Have to Go to Mars For Love | Winner |
| 2020 | Poetry | Candice Wuehle | Death Industrial Complex | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Poetry | Noah Falck | Exclusions | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Poetry | John Murillo | Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Poetry | Tess Taylor | Rift Zone | Shortlist |