| 2026 | Winner | Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974– | Jamaica Kincaid | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2026 | Finalist | Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse | Alice Bolin | HarperCollins |
| 2026 | Finalist | Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays | Clifford Thompson | Unknown |
| 2026 | Finalist | Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening | Ben Ratliff | Graywolf Press |
| 2026 | Finalist | The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich | Evan Osnos | Scribner |
| 2025 | Winner | A Passing West | Dagoberto Gilb | University of New Mexico Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | Magically Black and Other Essays | Jerald Walker | Amistad |
| 2025 | Finalist | My Affair with Art House Cinema | Phillip Lopate | Columbia University Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | Sing by the Burying Ground | Marianne Boruch | Northwestern University Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | The Salt of the Universe | Amy Leach | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2024 | Winner | The Deadline: Essays | Jill Lepore | Liveright |
| 2024 | Finalist | Holding the Note: Profiles in Music | David Remnick | Knopf |
| 2024 | Finalist | Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook | Sonya Huber | Unknown |
| 2024 | Finalist | Otherwise: Essays | Julie Marie Wade | Unknown |
| 2023 | Winner | A Left-Handed Woman | Judith Thurman | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2023 | Finalist | Happy-Go-Lucky | David Sedaris | Back Bay Books |
| 2023 | Finalist | Still No Word From You | Peter Orner | Catapult |
| 2023 | Finalist | The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home | Alison Townsend | University of Wisconsin Press |
| 2023 | Finalist | Translating Myself and Others | Jhumpa Lahiri | Princeton University Press |
| 2022 | Winner | Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South | Margaret Renkl | Milkweed Editions |
| 2022 | Finalist | A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance | Hanif Abdurraqib | Random House |
| 2022 | Finalist | Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time | Teju Cole | University of Chicago Press |
| 2022 | Finalist | Homo Irrealis: Essays | André Aciman | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2022 | Finalist | These Precious Days: Essays | Ann Patchett | Harper |
| 2021 | Winner | Had I Known: Collected Essays | Barbara Ehrenreich | Twelve |
| 2020 | Winner | Resurrection of the Wild | Deborah Fleming | Unknown |
| 2020 | Finalist | I Like To Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution | Emily Nussbaum | Random House |
| 2020 | Finalist | I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz | Eve Babitz | New York Review Books |
| 2020 | Finalist | Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays | Leslie Jamison | Little, Brown |
| 2020 | Finalist | Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion | Jia Tolentino | HarperCollins |
| 2019 | Winner | Against Memoir | Michelle Tea | Feminist Press |
| 2018 | Winner | No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters | Ursula K. Le Guin | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2017 | Winner | The Girls In My Town: Essays | Angela Morales | University of New Mexico Press |
| 2016 | Winner | Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Spiegel & Grau |
| 2016 | Finalist | After the Tall Timber: Collected Non-Fiction | Renata Adler | New York Review Books |
| 2016 | Finalist | Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles | David L. Ulin | University of California Press |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Givenness of Things: Essays | Marilynne Robinson | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Quarry | Susan Howe | Unknown |
| 2015 | Winner | Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadow of War | Ian Buruma | Unknown |
| 2015 | Finalist | Limber | Angela Pelster | Unknown |
| 2015 | Finalist | Loitering | Charles D’Ambrosio | Tin House |
| 2015 | Finalist | Moral Imagination | David Bromwich | Princeton University Press |
| 2015 | Finalist | The Empathy Exams | Leslie Jamison | Graywolf Press |
| 2014 | Winner | Critical Mass | James Wolcott | Anchor |
| 2014 | Finalist | Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers | Janet Malcolm | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2014 | Finalist | Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls | David Sedaris | Little, Brown |
| 2014 | Finalist | The Faraway Nearby | Rebecca Solnit | Viking |
| 2013 | Winner | What Light Can Do | Robert Hass | HarperCollins |
| 2013 | Finalist | The Story of America | Jill Lepore | Princeton University Press |
| 2013 | Finalist | Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture | Daniel Mendelsohn | Secker & Warburg |
| 2012 | Winner | Arguably: Essays | Christopher Hitchens | McClelland & Stewart |
| 2011 | Winner | Essays from the Nick of Time | Mark Slouka | Graywolf Press |
| 2004 | Winner | Seeds of Mortality | Stewart Justman | Unknown |
| 2003 | Winner | Test of Time | William H. Gass | Knopf |
| 2002 | Winner | Skeptical Music | David Bromwich | University of Chicago Press |
| 2001 | Winner | The Boilerplate Rhino | David Quammen | Scribner |
| 2000 | Winner | For the Time Being | Annie Dillard | Knopf |
| 1999 | Winner | The Death of Adam | Marilynne Robinson | Macmillan |
| 1998 | Winner | Finding the Trapdoor | Adam Hochschild | Unknown |
| 1997 | Winner | Fame and Folly | Cynthia Ozick | Knopf |
| 1996 | Winner | Other Minds | Thomas Nagel | Oxford University Press |
| 1995 | Winner | A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time | John Brinckerhoff Jackson | Yale University Press |
| 1994 | Winner | There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and it's a Good Thing, Too | Stanley Fish | Unknown |
| 1993 | Winner | The Critics Bear It Away: American Fiction and the Academy | Frederick Crews | Unknown |
| 1992 | Winner | The Culture of Pain | David Morris | University of California Press |
| 1991 | Winner | Love's Knowledge | Martha Nussbaum | Oxford University Press |
| 1990 | Winner | Essays Ancient and Modern | Bernard Knox | Johns Hopkins University Press |