Les cinq romans concourant pour le prix :
- The Throwback Special, de Chris Bachelder (Norton) ;
- News of the World, de Paulette Jiles (Morrow) ;
- The Association of Small Boms, de Karan Mahajan (Viking) ;
- The Underground Railroad, de Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) ;
- Another Brooklyn, de Jacqueline Woodson (Amistad).
- Strangers in Their Own Land. Anger dans Mourning on the American Right, d'Arlie Russell Hochschild (New Press) ;
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, d'Ibram X. Kendi (Nation) ;
- The Other Slavery. The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America, d'Andrés Reséndez (HMH) ;
- Nothing Ever Dies, de Viet Thanh Nguyen (Harvard University Press) ;
- Blood in the Water. The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, d'Heather Ann Thompson (Pantheon).
- Raymie Nightingale, de Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick) ;
- March. Book Three, de John Lewis et Andrew Aydin, illustré par Nate Powell (Top Shelf) ;
- When the Sea Turned to Silver, de Grace Lin (Little, Brown) ;
- Ghost, de Jason Reynolds (Atheneum) ;
- The Sun Is Also a Star, de Nicola Yoon (Delacorte).
- The Performance of Becoming Human, de Daniel Borzutzky (Brooklyn Arts Press) ;
- Collected Poems 1974-2004, de Rita Dove (Norton) ;
- Archeophonics, de Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan) ;
- The Abridged History of Rainfall, de Jay Hopler (McSweeney's) ;
- Look, de Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf).