November 1, 2024

Announcing the 2025 Southern Book Prize Finalists
Southern independent booksellers have selected the finalists for the 2025 Southern Book Prize (SBP), representing bookseller favorites from 2024 that are Southern in nature.

(Asheville, NC) Southern independent booksellers have selected the finalists for the 2025 Southern Book Prize (SBP), representing bookseller favorites from 2024 that are Southern in nature—either about the South or by a Southern writer (or both).

SBP nominations are submitted by bookseller members of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) and chosen from books that have received enthusiastic reviews from Southern booksellers. These eighteen finalists, six in each category, received the highest number of nominations, making them a collection of the most beloved “hand sells” in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature of the year.

The finalists make up the 2025 Southern Book Prize Ballot. Voting opens November 1 and will run through February 1, 2025 and is open to booksellers and readers who  love Southern literature and Southern independent bookstores.

VOTE HERE: The 2025 Southern Book Prize Ballot
See the 2025 Southern Book Prize finalists

SIBA launched the Southern Book Prize public ballot to encourage stores to engage their customers in the important question of what books deserve to be called “the  best Southern book of the year.” Participating bookstores promote the ballot to their customers, and submitted ballots are entered into a raffle to win a set of the finalist titles. Winners in each category will be chosen by popular vote. Southern Book Prize winners will be announced on February 14, Valentine’s Day.

The Finalists

Fiction

Rednecks by Taylor Brown [St. Martin's Press]
Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca [Berkley]
James by Percival Everett [Doubleday]
When the Jessamine Grows by Donna Everhart [Kensington]
Shae by Mesha Maren [Algonquin Books]
Tell It to Me Singing by Tita Ramírez [S&S/Marysue Rucci Books]

Nonfiction

The Witch's Daughter by Orenda Fink [Gallery Books]
Sharks Don't Sink by Jasmin Graham [Pantheon]
A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings [St. Martin's Press]
A Really Strange and Wonderful Time by Tom Maxwell [Hachette Books]
The Barn by Wright Thompson [Penguin Press]
The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich [Little, Brown and Company]

Young Readers

Not Like Other Girls by Meredith Adamo [Bloomsbury YA]
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal [Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)]
In Praise of Mystery by Ada Limón, Peter Sís (illus.) [Norton Young Readers]
Millie Fleur's Poison Garden by Christy Mandin [Orchard Books]
The Secret Dead Club by Karen Strong [Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers]
Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White [Peachtree Treen]

For more information, visit the home of the Southern Book Prize at The Southern Bookseller Review or contact Linda-Marie Barrett, Executive Director, Southern Booksellers Alliance at lindamarie@sibaweb.com.