Arnold Genthe, John Kuo Wei Tchen for Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown.
Angela Jackson for Solo in the Box Car Third Floor E.
Thomas McGrath for Echoes inside the labyrinth.
Ruthanne Lum McCunn, You-shan Tang, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung for Pie-Biter.
Paule Marshall for Praisesong for the Widow.
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for The heat bird.
Joseph Bruchac for Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets.
Jesús Colón for A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches.
Imamu Amiri Baraka for Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men.
Howard Schwartz, Mark Podwal for The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman.
Seán Ó Tuama for An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred: Poems of the Dispossessed.
Peter Guralnick for Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians.
Judy Grahn for The Queen of Wands: Poetry.
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn for Pet food & tropical apparitions.
Houston for Californians: Searching for the Golden State
Harriet Rohmer for Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento.
Evangelina Vigil-Piñón for Thirty: An' Seen a Lot.
Barbara Christian for Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976.
Ronald Phillip Tanaka for The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry.
Leroy Quintana for Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets.
Jerome Rothenberg for Pre-Faces and Other Writings.
Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, Judy Yung for Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940.
Hilton Obenzinger for This Passover or the next, I will never be in Jerusalem.
Frank Chin for The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon.
Duane Niatum for Songs for the Harvester of Dreams: Poems.
Robert Kelly for The Time of Voice: Poems 1994–1996.
Peter Blue Cloud for Back Then Tomorrow.
Helen Adam for Turn Again to Me & Other Poems.
Santos for Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories
Milton Murayama for All I Asking for Is My Body.
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for Random Possession.
Douglas Woolf for Future preconditional: A collection.
Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation. In 1987 it was renamed back to National Book Awards. In 1980, the unrelated National Book Awards was renamed American Book Awards.