Announcing the 2025 Science + Literature Titles

The National Book Foundation (NBF) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation today announced selected titles for the fourth year of the Science + Literature program, made possible by a three-year, $525,000 renewal grant from the Sloan Foundation. The initiative identifies three books annually, across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, that deepen readers’ understanding of science and technology. Authors receive a $10,000 cash prize, are celebrated at a public ceremony in March, and are featured in associated national public programming. The titles are selected by a committee of five scientific and literary experts, also announced today.

The three honored titles consider what it means to be animal, to be human, and to be responsible to the world we inhabit. The Last Animal  by Ramona Ausubel follows two teenage sisters who join their mother—a paleontology graduate student—on scientific expeditions near and far. Ausubel’s novel captures the wonder of scientific discovery as Jane and her daughters navigate grief, sexism, and a journey to find a wooly mammoth and themselves. Claire Wahmanholm’s Meltwater dissects the vulnerability of parenthood and our natural world, with embedded erasure poems of Lacy M. Johnson’s “How to Mourn a Glacier” throughout the collection. Meltwater simultaneously mourns the disastrous effects of the climate crisis while finding moments of joy in the everyday through the eyes of a new mother. Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us invites readers into the remarkable sensory worlds of birds, bugs, crocodiles, dogs, and many other animals to show us how these creatures experience the world. Yong argues that all creatures, humans included, have their own unique way of perceiving their surroundings, making the case for why we must collectively protect our biologically diverse planet.

“The Science + Literature program, now in its fourth year, highlights diverse voices in scientific writing and honors innovative works that expand our understanding of science, technology, and our universe,” said Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. “We are delighted to celebrate this year’s selected authors Ramona Ausubel, Claire Wahmanholm, and Ed Yong—three exceptional storytellers whose writing unlocks the mysteries of our shared planet, explores the realities of living at a time of environmental collapse, and revels in the many sensory perceptions of our world. We are grateful to the 2025 Science + Literature Committee for elevating these works, and to the Sloan Foundation whose deep commitment to honoring groundbreaking science writing makes Science + Literature possible.”

“We are delighted to join the National Book Foundation in recognizing these three powerful and unique writers engaging with scientific themes and characters across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “These gifted storytellers shine a scientific and poetic light on the beauties and terrors of nature and what they reveal to us about our deepest selves and our existence on this planet. We’re proud to add Ramona Ausubel, Claire Wahmanholm, and Ed Yong to Sloan’s nationwide book program, which has supported over 200 books from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winner American Prometheus, the basis of Christopher Nolan’s hit film Oppenheimer; and Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures to recent works such as by Nicola Twilley’s Frostbite and Patchen Barss’ The Impossible Man.”

On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 join the National Book Foundation and Sloan Foundation for an in-person ceremony at The Cooper Union’s Frederick P. Rose Auditorium featuring readings and conversation with the selected authors. The program is free and open to the public, and livestreamed for readers everywhere. For the third consecutive year, the Science + Literature Ceremony is presented in partnership with The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a distinguished private college of art, architecture and engineering founded in 1859 by inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist Peter Cooper. For in-person and livestream tickets, please register here.

The 2025 selection committee includes authors and scientists whose work across fields interrogates and advances public understanding of the limitless connections between science, technology, and the humanities. Sara Goudarzi is a science journalist and author of the novel The Almond in the Apricot; Elizabeth Kolbert is a journalist and the author of The Sixth Extinction, among others; Beronda L. Montgomery is a biologist and the author of Lessons From Plants; Craig Santos Perez (Chair) is an eco-poet and Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry for from unincorporated territory [åmot]; and Joshua Sariñana is a neuroscientist, artist, and writer.

Public events featuring the selected authors will take place in cities across the country in Spring 2025 following the March ceremony, including with partners at Metropolitan Community College, a public community college system in Omaha, NE; and the University of California, Riverside, a public research university in Riverside, CA. Event details will be announced alongside the NBF Presents spring season on Wednesday, January 29, 2025.

Learn more about the Science + Literature program here.

2025 Science + Literature Selected Titles:

Ramona Ausubel, The Last Animal
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Claire Wahmanholm, Meltwater
Milkweed Editions

Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Random House / Penguin Random House

Author Biographies:

Ramona Ausubel is the national bestselling author of five books, most recently The Last Animal. She is the recipient of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and has been a finalist for both the California and Colorado Book Awards and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, One Story, Tin House, the Oxford American, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is a professor at Colorado State University and lives in Boulder, Colorado with her family.

Claire Wahmanholm is the author of Wilder, Redmouth, and, most recently, Meltwater, which was a finalist for the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2024 Minnesota Book Award. A 2020 McKnight Writer Fellow, and the winner of the 2022 Montreal International Poetry Prize, she lives in the Twin Cities.

Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer based in Oakland. He is the author of two bestselling books: I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, and An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize. He was a guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a member of Liminal—a science communication collective, co-founded by his wife Liz Neeley. He has a corgi named Typo.

Committee Biographies:

Sara Goudarzi is the author of the debut novel The Almond in the Apricot and several children’s titles including Leila’s Day at the Pool. Her nonfiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in Scientific American, the New York Times, National Geographic News,The Adirondack Review, and Drunken Boat, among others. Sara has taught writing at New York University and Mediabistro, and is a 2017 Writers in Paradise Les Standiford fellow and a Tin House alumna.

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books, including The Sixth Extinction, which won a Pulitzer Prize and Under a White Sky, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by The Washington Post. She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner and has received a National Academies award, a Heinz Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the Sloan Foundation, and the BBVA Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication.

Beronda L. Montgomery, PhD is a writer, science communicator, and researcher. She has spent 20 years in academia, most recently as Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean, and Professor of Biology of Grinnell College. Dr. Montgomery is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Plant Biologists, and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Dr. Montgomery has received the Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award from the American Society of Plant Biologists, Excellence in Supporting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging from the North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee, and the 2023 Hutchinson Medal of the Chicago Horticultural Society. Dr. Montgomery is author of Lessons from Plants, and is at work on her second book, When Trees Testify.

Craig Santos Perez (Chair) is an indigenous Pacific Islander from Guam. He is the co-editor of nine anthologies and the author of seven books of poetry and the academic monograph, Navigating CHamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization. His collection From Unincorporated Territory [åmot] received the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry.

Joshua Sariñana, PhD, explores the connections between the brain, art, and technology. He earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he researched the role of dopamine in network communication and its effects on reinforcement and spatial learning. His transdisciplinary projects are informed by network properties of the brain and mind, guiding his creative endeavors. Sariñana is also a communications specialist, contributing his insights to WIRED, MIT Technology Review, and with audiences at the Museum of Science, Boston.