American Book Awards

The American Book Awards are an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers."

The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit Before Columbus Foundation, which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980. The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. Previous winners include novelists, social scientists, philosophers, poets, and historians such as Dana Gioia, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, MacKenzie Bezos, Isabel Allende, bell hooks, Don DeLillo, Derrick Bell, Robin Kelley, Joy Harjo and Tommy J. Curry.

National Book Awards

In 1980, the unrelated National Book Awards was renamed American Book Awards. In 1987 it was renamed back to National Book Awards. Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation.

Recipients

1980s

1980

Douglas Woolf for Future Preconditional: A Collection
Edward Dorn for Hello, La Jolla
Jayne Cortez for Mouth on Paper
Leslie Marmon Silko for Ceremony
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for Random Possession
Milton Murayama for All I Asking for Is My Body
Quincy Troupe for Snake Back Solos
Rudolfo Anaya for Tortuga, a novel

1981

Alta for Shameless Hussy
Alan Chong Lau for Songs for Jadina
Bienvenido N. Santos for Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories
Helen Adam for Turn Again to Me & Other Poems
Lionel Mitchell for Traveling Light
Miguel Algarín for On Call
Nicholasa Mohr for Felita
Peter Blue Cloud for Back Then Tomorrow
Robert Kelly for The Time of Voice: Poems 1994–1996
Rose Drachler for The Choice
Susan Howe for The Liberties
Toni Cade Bambara for The Salt Eaters

1982

Al Young for Bodies and Soul
Duane Niatum for Songs for the Harvester of Dreams: Poems
E. L. Mayo for Collected Poems E L Mayo
Frank Chin for The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon
Hilton Obenzinger for This Passover or the next, I will never be in Jerusalem
Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, Judy Yung for Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940
Jerome Rothenberg for Pre-Faces and Other Writings
Joyce Carol Thomas for Marked by Fire
Leroy Quintana for Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets
Lorna Dee Cervantes for Emplumada
Ronald Phillip Tanaka for The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry
Russell Banks for Book of Jamaica
Tato Laviera for Enclave

1983

Barbara Christian for Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976
Cecilia Liang for Chinese Folk Poetry
Evangelina Vigil-Piñón for Thirty: An' Seen a Lot
Harriet Rohmer for Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento
James D. Houston for Californians: Searching for the Golden State
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn for Pet food & tropical apparitions
John A. Williams for Click Song, a novel
Joy Kogawa for Obasan
Judy Grahn for The Queen of Wands: Poetry
Nash Candelaria for Not by the Sword
Peter Guralnick for Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians
Seán Ó Tuama for An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred: Poems of the Dispossessed

1984

Cecil Brown for Days Without Weather
Gary Snyder for Axe Handles: Poems
Howard Schwartz, Mark Podwal for The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman
Imamu Amiri Baraka for Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men
Jesús Colón for A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches
Joseph Bruchac for Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets
Maurice Kenny for The Mama Poems
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for The heat bird
Miné Okubo for Citizen 13660
Paule Marshall for Praisesong for the Widow
Ruthanne Lum McCunn, You-shan Tang, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung for Pie-Biter
Thomas McGrath for Echoes inside the labyrinth
Venkatesh Kulkarni for Naked in Deccan
William J. Kennedy for O Albany!

1985

Angela Jackson for Solo in the Box Car Third Floor E
Arnold Genthe, John Kuo Wei Tchen for Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown
Colleen J. McElroy for Queen of the Ebony Isles
Gary Soto for Living Up The Street
Peter Irons for Justice at War
Keiho Soga, Taisanboku Mori, Sojin Takei, Muin Ozaki for Poets Behind Barbed Wire
Louise Erdrich for Love Medicine, a novel
Maureen Owen for Amelia Earhart
May Sarton for At Seventy: A Journal
Robert Edward Duncan for Ground Work: Before the War
Ron Jones for Say Ray
Sandra Cisneros for The House on Mango Street
Sonia Sanchez for Homegirls and Handgrenades
Julia Vinograd for The Book of Jerusalem
William Oandasan for Round Valley Songs

1986

Anna Lee Walters for The Sun Is Not Merciful: Short Stories
Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa for This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
Helen Barolini for The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women
Jeff Hannusch for I Hear You Knockin : The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues
Linda Hogan for Seeing Through the Sun
Miguel Algarín for Time's Now/Ya Es Tiempo
Natasha Borovsky for A Daughter of the Nobility
Raymond Federman for Smiles on Washington Square: A Love Story of Sorts
Susan Howe for My Emily Dickinson
Terence Winch for Irish Musicians/American Friends
Toshio Mori for Yokohama, California

1987

Ai for SIN
Ana Castillo for The Mixquiahuala Letters
Cyn Zarco for Cir'cum.nav'i.ga'tion
Daniel McGuire for Portrait of Little Boy in darkness
Dorothy Bryant for Confessions of Madame Psyche: Memoirs and Letters of Mei-Li Murrow
Etheridge Knight for The Essential Etheridge Knight
Gary Giddins for Celebrating Bird: The Triumph Of Charlie Parker
Harvey Pekar for The New American Splendor Anthology: From Off the Streets of Cleveland
James Welch for Fools Crow
John Wieners for Selected Poems: 1958–1984
Juan Felipe Herrera for Face Games
Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum for liberazione della donna: feminism in Italy
Michael Mayo for Practicing Angels: A Contemporary Anthology of San Francisco Bay Area Poetry
Septima Poinsette Clark, Cynthia Stokes Brown for Ready from Within: A First Person Narrative
Terry McMillan for Mama

1988

Allison Blakely for Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought
Charles Olson for The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems
Daisy Bates for The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir
David Halberstam for The Reckoning
Edward Sanders for Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Poems 1961–1985
Gerald Vizenor for Griever: An American Monkey King in China
Jimmy Santiago Baca for Martin & Meditations on the South Valley
Kesho Y. Scott, Cherry Muhanji, Egyirba High for Tight Spaces
Marlon K. Hom for Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown
Benjamin Hoff for The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley

2000s

2000

Esther G. Belin for From the Belly of My Beauty
Allan J. Ryan for The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art
Andrés Montoya for The Ice Worker Sings and Other Poems
Camille Peri, Kate Moses for Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood
David A. J. Richards for Italian American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Identity
David Toop for Exotica
Elva Trevino Hart for Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child
Emil Guillermo for Amok: Essays from an Asian American Perspective; With an Introduction by Ishmael Reed
Frank Chin for The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R.R. Co.
Helen Thomas for Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times
Janisse Ray for Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
John Russell Rickford, Russell John Rickford for Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English
Leroy TeCube for Year in Nam: A Native American Soldier's Story
Lois-Ann Yamanaka for Heads By Harry
Michael Lally for It's Not Nostalgia: Poetry & Prose
Michael Patrick MacDonald for All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto for Why She Left Us, a novel
Robert Creeley for The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975–2005
Editor/Publisher: Ronald Sukenick
Keith Gilyard, John Oliver Killens
Akbar Ahmed, Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam
Camille Dungy, Suck on the Marrow
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel
William W. Cook and James Tatum, African American Writers and Classical Tradition
Gerald Vizenor, Shrouds of White Earth
Eric Gansworth, Extra Indians
Ivan Argüelles, The Death of Stalin
Geoffrey Alan Argent, ed., The Complete Plays of Jean Racine: Volume 1: The Fratricides, translated by Argent from French
Neela Vaswani, You Have Given Me a Country
Sasha Pimentel Chacón, Insides She Swallowed
Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, eds., The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History of Culture in the United States
Carmen Giménez Smith, Bring Down the Little Birds
Luis Valdez, Lifetime Achievement
John A. Williams, Lifetime Achievement

2012

Source:

Will Alexander, Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture, Essay Press
Jacob M. Appel, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up, Cargo
Philip P. Choy, San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide To Its History & Architecture, City Lights
Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist, HarperCollins
Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was An Aztec, Copper Canyon Press
Louise Erdrich, The Round House, HarperCollins
Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence, University of Chicago
Judy Grahn, A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet, Aunt Lute Books
Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave: A Memoir, W.W. Norton & Co.
Demetria Martinez, The Block Captain's Daughter, University of Oklahoma Press
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Blood Songs, The Ecstatic Exchange
dg nanouk okpik, Corpse Whale, University of Arizona Press
Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI's War On Student Radical and Reagan's Rise to Power, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Christopher B. Teuton, Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liar's Club, University of North Carolina
Lew Welch, Ring of Bone: Collected Poems, City Lights
Ivan Argüelles, Lifetime Achievement
Greil Marcus, Lifetime Achievement
Floyd Salas, Lifetime Achievement

2014

Source:

Andrew Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, Metropolitan Books
Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire; The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, University of California Press
Juan Delgado (poetry) and Thomas McGovern (photography), Vital Signs, Heyday Books
Alex Espinoza, The Five Acts of Diego León, Random House
Jonathan Scott Holloway, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940, University of North Carolina Press
Joan Naviyuk Kane, Hyperboreal, University of Pittsburgh Press
Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tanya Olson, Boyishly, YesYes Books
Sterling D. Plumpp, Home/Bass, Third World Press
Emily Raboteau, Searching For Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Atlantic Monthly Press
Jerome Rothenberg with Heriberto Yepez, Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader, Commonwealth Books
Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, Metropolitan Books
Margaret Wrinkle, Wash, Atlantic Monthly Press
Koon Woon, Water Chasing Water, Kaya Press
Armond White, Anti-Censorship Award
Michael Parenti, Lifetime Achievement

2015

Source:

Hisham Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture (Vintage)
Arlene Biala, her beckoning hands (Word Poetry)
Arthur Dong, Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American Nightclubs, 1936-1970 (DeepFocus Productions)
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Beacon Press)
Peter J. Harris, The Black Man of Happiness (Black Man of Happiness Project)
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Books)
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (Simon & Schuster)
Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account (Pantheon)
Manuel Luis Martinez, Los Duros (Floricanto Press)
Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [guma’] (Omnidawn)
Carlos Santana with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (Little, Brown and Company)
Ira Sukrungruang, Southside Buddhist (University of Tampa Press)
Astra Taylor, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Henry Holt)
Anne Waldman, Lifetime Achievement

2016

Source:

Laura Da', Tributaries (University of Arizona)
Susan Muaddi Darraj, Curious Land: Stories from Home (University of Massachusetts)
Deepa Iyer, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multicultural Future (The New Press)
Mat Johnson, Loving Day (Spiegel & Grau)
John Keene, Counternarratives (New Directions)
William J. Maxwell, F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature (Princeton University)
Lauret Savoy, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Counterpoint)
Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Lawrence Hill Books)
Jesús Salvador Treviño, Return to Arroyo Grande (Arte Público)
Nick Turse, Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa (Haymarket Books)
Ray Young Bear, Manifestation Wolverine: The Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear (Open Road Integrated Media)
Louise Meriwether, Lifetime Achievement
Lyra Monteiro and Nancy Isenberg, Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award
Chiitaanibah Johnson, Andrew Hope Award

2017

Source:

Rabia Chaudry Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial (St. Martin's Press)
Flores A. Forbes Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Skyhorse Publishing)
Yaa Gyasi Homegoing (Knopf)
Holly Hughes Passings (Expedition Press)
Randa Jarrar Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (Sarabande Books)
Bernice L. McFadden The Book of Harlan (Akashic Books)
Brian D. McInnes Sounding Thunder: The Stories of Francis Pegahmagabow (Michigan State University Press)
Patrick Phillips Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (W. W. Norton & Company)
Vaughn Rasberry Race and the Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination (Harvard University Press)
Marc Anthony Richardson Year of the Rat (Fiction Collective Two)
Shawna Yang Ryan Green Island (Knopf)
Ruth Sergel See You in the Streets: Art, Action, and Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (University of Iowa Press)
Solmaz Sharif Look (Graywolf Press)
Adam Soldofsky Memory Foam (Disorder Press)
Alfredo Véa The Mexican Flyboy (University of Oklahoma Press)
Dean Wong Seeing the Light: Four Decades in Chinatown (Chin Music Press)
Nancy Mercado Lifetime Achievement
Ammiel Alcalay Editor/Publisher Award: Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative

2018

Source:

Thi Bui The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir (Harry N. Abrams)
Rachelle Cruz God's Will for Monsters (Inlandia Books)
Tommy Curry The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press)
Tongo Eisen-Martin Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights)
Dana Naone Hall Life of the Land: Articulations of a Native Writer (University of Hawaii)
Kelly Lytle Hernández City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965 (University of North Carolina)
Victor LaValle The Changeling: A Novel (Spiegel & Grau)
Bojan Louis Currents (BkMk Press)
Valeria Luiselli Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (Coffee House Press)
Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B. V. Olguín Altermundos Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press)
Tiya Miles The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (The New Press)
Tommy Pico Nature Poem (Tin House Books)
Rena Priest Patriarchy Blues (MoonPath Press)
Joseph Rios Shadowboxing: poems & impersonations (Omnidawn)
Sunaura Taylor Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (The New Press)
Sequoyah Guess Lifetime Achievement
Kellie Jones South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (Duke University Press): Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award
Charles F. Harris Editor/Publisher Award
Rob Rogers Anti-Censorship Award
Heroes Are Gang Leaders Oral Literature Award

2019

Source:

Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, and Floyd Cheung John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press)
May-lee Chai Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories (Blair)
Louise DeSalvo The House of Early Sorrows: A Memoir in Essays (Fordham University Press)
Heid E. Erdrich New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press)
Ángel García Teeth Never Sleep: Poems (University of Arkansas Press)
Tommy Orange There There (Knopf)
Halifu Osumare Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir (University Press of Florida)
Christopher Patton Unlikeness Is Us: Fourteen from the Exeter Book (Gaspereau Press)
Mark Sarvas Memento Park: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jeffrey C. Stewart The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press)
William T. Vollmann Carbon Ideologies: Volume I, No Immediate Danger, Volume II, No Good Alternative (Viking Press|Viking)
G. Willow Wilson and Nico Leon Ms. Marvel Vol. 9: Teenage Wasteland (Marvel Comics)
Nathan Hare Lifetime Achievement Award
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Editor/Publisher Award
Moor Mother Oral Literature Award

2020s

2020

{| class="wikitable"

! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher

| Reginald Dwayne Betts || Felon: Poems || W.W. Norton

| Sara Borjas || Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff || Noemi Press

| Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell (editors) || Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman || City Lights

| Staceyann Chin || Crossfire: A Litany for Survival || Haymarket

| Kali Fajardo-Anstine || Sabrina & Corina: Stories || One World

| Tara Fickle || The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities || New York University Press

| Erika Lee || America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States || Basic Books

| Yoko Ogawa || The Memory Police || Pantheon

| Jake Skeets || Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers || Milkweed Editions

| George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker || They Called Us Enemy || Top Shelf Productions

| Ocean Vuong || On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous || Penguin

| De'Shawn Charles Winslow || In West Mills || Bloomsbury Publishing

| Albert Woodfox with Leslie George || Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope || Grove Press

| Eleanor W. Traylor || Lifetime Achievement Award ||

| Kofi Natambu || Editor Award: The Panopticon Review ||

| Jasper Bernes, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr || Publisher Award: Commune Editions ||

| Amalia Leticia Ortiz || Oral Literature Award ||

| Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll (editors) || Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy ||

2021

{| class="wikitable"

! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher

| Ayad Akhtar || Homeland Elegies || Little, Brown & Co.

| Maisy Card || These Ghosts Are Family || Simon & Schuster

| Anthony Cody || Borderland Apocrypha || Omnidawn Press

| Ben Ehrenreich || Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time || Counterpoint

| Johanna Fernández || The Young Lords: A Radical History || University of North Carolina Press

| Carolyn Forché || In the Lateness of the World: Poems || Penguin Press

| John Giorno || Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment || Farrar, Straus and Giroux

| Cathy Park Hong || Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning || One World

| Randall Horton || {#289-128}: Poems || University of Kentucky

| Gerald Horne || The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century || Monthly Review Press

| Robert P. Jones || White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity || Simon & Schuster

| Judy Juanita || Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland || Equidistance Press

| William Melvin Kelley (author), Aiki Kelley (illustrator) || Dunfords Travels Everywheres || Anchor Books

| Maryemma Graham || Lifetime Achievement Award ||

| Shana Redmond || Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson ||

| Jacob Soboroff || Anti-Censorship Award: Separated: Inside an American Tragedy ||

2022

{| class="wikitable"

! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher

| Spencer Ackerman || Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump || Viking

| Esther G. Belin, Jeff Burgland, Connie A. Jacobs, Anthony K. Webster || The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature || University of Arizona Press

| Emma Brodie || Songs in Ursa Major || Knopf

| Daphne Brooks || Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound || Harvard University Press

| Myriam J. A. Chancy || What Storm, What Thunder || Tin House Books

| Francisco Goldman || Monkey Boy || Grove Press

| Zakiya Dalila Harris || The Other Black Girl: A Novel || Atria Books

| Fatima Shaik || Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood || The Historic New Orleans Collection

| Edwin Torres || Quanundrum: [i will be your many angled thing] || Roof Books

| Truong Tran || Book of the Other: Small in Comparison || Kaya Press

| Mai Der Vang || Yellow Rain || Graywolf Press

| Phillip B. Williams || Mutiny || Penguin Books

| Michelle Zauner || Crying in H Mart: A Memoir || Knopf

| Gayl Jones || Lifetime Achievement Award ||

| Jessica E. Teague || Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: Sound Recording Technology and American Literature ||

| Jeffrey St. Clair || Anti-Censorship Award ||

| Wave Books: Charlie Wright (Publisher) / Joshua Beckman (Editor in Chief) || Editor/Publisher Award ||

2023

{| class="wikitable"

! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher

| Ayanna Lloyd Banwo || When We Were Birds || Doubleday

| Edgar Gomez || High-Risk Homosexual || Soft Skull

| Kelly Lytle Hernández || Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands || W.W. Norton & Company

| Everett Hoagland || The Ways: Poems of Affirmation, Reflection and Wonder || North Star Nova Press

| Anne Hyde || Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West || W.W. Norton & Company

| Jamil Jan Kochai || The Haunting of Haji Hotak and Other Stories || Viking

| Aidan Levy || Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins || Hachette Books

| Bojan Louis || Sinking Bell: Stories || Gray Wolf Press

| Leila Mottley || Nightcrawling || Knopf

| Darryl Pinckney || Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan || Farrar, Straus and Giroux

| Sherry Shenoda || Mummy Eaters || University of Nebraska Press

| Mosab Abu Toha || Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza || City Lights Books

| Javier Zamora || Solito: A Memoir || Hogarth

| Maxine Hong Kingston || Lifetime Achievement Award ||

| Neta Crawford || Anti-Censorship Award ||

| Bell hooks || Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism ||

2024

{| class="wikitable"

! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher

| Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni || Independence: A Novel || William Morrow

| Debra Magpie Earling || The Lost Journals of Sacajawea: A Novel || Milkweed Editions

| Paul S. Flores || We Still Be: Poems and Performances || El Martillo Press

| Aisha Abdel Gawad || Between Two Moons: A Novel || Doubleday

| Gregg Hecimovich || The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative || Ecco

| C. L. R. James, Nic Watts (adapted), Sakina Karimjee (illustrator)|| Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History|| Verso

| R. F. Kuang || Yellowface || William Morrow

| Felipe Luciano || Flesh & Spirit: Confessions of a Young Lord || Empire State Editions

| Fae Myenne Ng || Orphan Bachelors || Grove Press

| Roger Reeves || Dark Days: Fugitive Essays || Graywolf

| John N. Roberts || Changing the Commons: Stories About Place Making || ORO Editions

| Barbara D. Savage || Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar || Yale University Press

| Rachel L. Swarns || The 272: The Families Who were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church || Random House

| Henry Threadgill, Brent Hayes Edwards || Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music || Knopf

| Valerie Wilson Wesley || A Shimmer of Red (An Odessa Jones Mystery) || Kensington

| Rosanna Xia || California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline || Heyday

| John Yau || Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art || Black Sparrow Press

| Monica Youn || From From || Graywolf

| Jessica Hagerdon || Lifetime Achievement Award ||

| Jeff Deutsch (publisher) / Parneshia Jones (editor) || Editor/Publisher Award ||

| Rabbi Michael Lerner || Tikkun Magazine ||

| Jeffrey D. Sachs ||Anti-Censorship Award ||

| Asna Tabassum || Anti-Censorship Award ||

| Lynnée Denise || Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters || University of Texas Press

| Brenda M. Greene || Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: "Book Review: Erasure by Percival Everett, The Basis for the Film American Fiction" || Our Time Press

| Mehdi Hasan || Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: Zeteo

| Kate Wagner || Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: "Behind F1's Velvet Curtain" || Escape Collection

2025

{| class="wikitable"

! Author(s) !! Title !! Publisher

| Kaveh Akbar || Martyr!: A Novel || Knopf

| Amy M. Alvarez || Makeshift Altar: Poems || University Press of Kentucky

| Marie-Helene Bertino || Beautyland: A Novel || Farrar, Straus and Giroux

| Marcela Fuentes || Malas: A Novel || Penguin Books

| Percival Everett || James: A Novel || Penguin Books

| Fady Joudah || [...] Poems || Milkweed Editions

| Stacey Levine || Mice 1961 || Verse Chorus Press

| Sarah Lewis || The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America || Harvard University Press

| Tomiko Matsumoto, Ryokuyo Matsumoto, and Nancy Matsumoto, editor || By the Shore of Lake Michigan || UCLA Asian American Studies Center

| Sharon McMahon || The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement || Thesis

| Claire Messud || This Strange Eventful History: A Novel || W.W. Norton

| Maceo Montoya, Javier O. Huerta || Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First Century Latinx Writers || University of Pittsburgh Press

| m.s. RedCherries || mother || Penguin Press

| Danzy Senna || Colored Television: A Novel || Riverhead

| A.B. Spellman, Laurie Scheyer editor || Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems || Wesleyan University Press

| John Edgar Wideman || Lifetime Achievement Award ||

| Erroll McDonald || Editor/Publisher Award: Vice President/Executive Director, Penguin Random House ||

| Joy Reid || Anti-Censorship Award ||

References

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