Brooklyn Public Library on Sept. 4 announced the winners of its 2025 Book Prize, recognizing Emet North’s In Universes for fiction and Mosab Abu Toha’s Forest of Noise for nonfiction.
North’s debut novel introduces readers to Raffi, a cosmology lab worker fascinated by questions of dark matter and alternative universes. At its heart, the story follows Raffi’s connection with Britt, a queer sculptor and explores the possibility of other worlds where human relationships take on different meanings.
The fiction committee, chaired by librarian Gretchen Alexander, praised the novel’s inventive style and its hopeful exploration of connection, shaped in part by North’s eclectic background in quantum physics, carpentry and horse training.
The nonfiction prize went to Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha for Forest of Noise, a collection of poems written during the devastation in Gaza.
Despite the destruction of his home and the libraries he had built for his community, Abu Toha continued to write, producing work that is both urgent and lyrical. The nonfiction committee, led by Brynna Ververs, highlighted how his poems cut through the static of political discourse to bring readers into deeply personal experiences of survival, resilience and humanity.
"Knowing that this recognition comes from librarians and library staff makes it even more meaningful, especially to someone like me, who founded two libraries in Gaza," Toha said in a statement.
The winners have both written profoundly moving works about our future, said Linda E. Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the Brooklyn Public Library.
"Emet North invites us to imagine how interlocking decisions affect our paths, building new universes at each turn. And likewise, in the darkest of times with his world literally collapsing around him, Poet Mosab Abu Toha continues to write and find hope through memories," Johnson said.
This year’s Book Prize drew nearly 100 nominations, spanning stories of immigration, survival, love and community. Since its establishment in 2015 by the Brooklyn Eagles, a group of young library supporters, the prize has celebrated writers whose work reflects the diversity and spirit of Brooklyn. Past honorees include Kaveh Akbar, Blair L.M. Kelley, Catherine Lacey, Lamya H, Xochitl Gonzalez, Threa Almontaser, Carmen Maria Machado, Ocean Vuong and Miriam Toews.
"It’s hard to put into words what libraries mean to me but suffice it to say that when I was in elementary school, I was asked to choose what three things I would bring with me to the moon, and my first answer was “the library.” (An answer I stand by to this day.) Libraries are the place I have always felt most immediately at home,” said North.
