The American Book Award is 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.""For Immediate Release:"
(August 5, 2010). Before Columbus Foundation. Retrieved February 17, 2012. The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit

Before Columbus Foundation The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, "dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature". The Foundation makes annual awards for books published in ...

, 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, poets, and historians such as

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, '' The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' S ...

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...

Isabel Allende Isabel Angélica Allende Llona (; born in Lima, 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the genre magical realism, is known for novels such as ''The House of the Spirits'' (''La casa de los espír ...

bell hooks Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author and social activist who was Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She is best known for her writings on ...

Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, perf ...

, Derrick Bell,

Robin D. G. Kelley Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (born March 14, 1962) is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Sou ...

Joy Harjo Joy Harjo ( ; born May 9, 1951) is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetr ...

and Tommy J. Curry.

National Book Awards

In 1980, the unrelated

National Book Awards The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Na ...

was renamed American Book Awards. In 1987 it was renamed back to National Book Awards."History Of The National Book Awards"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 17, 2012. Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation.

Recipients

1980 to 1989

;1980 *

Douglas Woolf Douglas Woolf (March 23, 1922 – January 18, 1992) was an American author of short stories, novels and book reviews. Biography Born in New York City, Woolf grew up in Larchmont, New York and attended Harvard University from 1939 to 1942. D ...

for ''Future preconditional: A collection'' *

Edward Dorn Edward Merton Dorn (April 2, 1929 – December 10, 1999, aged 70) was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is '' ''Gunslinger'. Overview Dorn was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. ...

for ''Hello, La Jolla'' *

Jayne Cortez Jayne Cortez (May 10, 1934 – December 28, 2012) was an African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist whose voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic and dynamic innovations in lyricism and ...

for ''Mouth on Paper'' * Leslie Marmon Silko for ''

Ceremony A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. The word may be of Etruscan origin, via the Latin '' caerimonia''. Church and civil (secula ...

'' * Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for ''Random Possession'' * Milton Murayama for ''All I Asking for Is My Body'' *

Quincy Troupe Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr. (born July 22, 1939) is an American poet, editor, journalist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California. He is best known as the biographer of Miles Davis, the jazz music ...

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 Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 – December 9, 1995), was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor. Biography Early life and education Miltona Mirkin Cade was bor ...

for '' The Salt Eaters'' 1982 *

Al Young Albert James Young (May 31, 1939 – April 17, 2021) was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books include ...

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 Frank Chin (born February 25, 1940) is an American author and playwright. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of Asian-American theatre. Life and career Frank Chin was born in Berkeley, California on February 25, 1940; until the age of s ...

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 Jerome Rothenberg (born December 11, 1931) is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Early life and education Jerome Rothenberg was born and raised in New York ...

for ''Pre-Faces and Other Writings'' *

Joyce Carol Thomas Joyce Carol Thomas (May 25, 1938 – August 13, 2016) was an African-American poet, playwright, motivational speaker, and author of more than 30 children's books. Background Thomas was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, the fifth of nine children in ...

for '' Marked by Fire'' * Leroy Quintana for ''Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets'' *

Lorna Dee Cervantes Lorna Dee Cervantes (born August 6, 1954) is an American poet and activist, who is considered one of the greatest figures in Chicano poetry. She has been described by Alurista, as "probably the best Chicana poet active today." Early life Ce ...

for ''Emplumada'' *

Ronald Phillip Tanaka Ronald Phillip Tanaka (1944–2007) was a Japanese-American poet and editor. Life He was a '' Sansei'' (a third-generation Japanese-American), born in the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona in 1944 behind barbed wire. He attended Pomona C ...

for ''The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry'' *

Russell Banks Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usua ...

for ''Book of Jamaica'' *

Tato Laviera Jesús Abraham "Tato" Laviera (September 5, 1950 – November 1, 2013) was a Latino poet and playwright in the United States. Born Jesús Laviera Sanches, in Santurce, Puerto Rico, he moved to New York City at the age of ten, with his family, to ...

for ''Enclave'' 1983 *

Barbara Christian Barbara T. Christian (December 12, 1943 – June 25, 2000) was an American author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among several books, and over 100 published articles, Christian was most wel ...

for ''Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976'' * Cecilia Liang for ''Chinese Folk Poetry'' *

Evangelina Vigil-Piñón Evangelina Vigil-Piñón is a Chicana poet, children's book author, director, translator, and television personality. Life Her mother's family emigrated to Texas in the early 1900s from Parras, Mexico. As a child, Vigil-Piñón lived with her m ...

for ''Thirty: An' Seen a Lot'' * Harriet Rohmer for ''Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento'' *

James D. Houston James Dudley Houston (November 10, 1933 – April 16, 2009) was an American novelist, poet and editor. He wrote nine novels and a number of non-fiction works (some co-authored and/or edited). Early life Houston was born in San Francisco, where h ...

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 Joy Nozomi Kogawa (born June 6, 1935) is a Canadian poet and novelist of Japanese descent. Life Kogawa was born Joy Nozomi Nakayama on June 6, 1935, in Vancouver, British Columbia, to first-generation Japanese Canadians Lois Yao Nakayama a ...

for ''

Obasan ''Obasan'' is a novel by Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. First published by Lester and Orpen Dennys in 1981, it chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War from the pers ...

'' *

Judy Grahn Judy Grahn (born July 28, 1940) is an American poet and author. Inspired by her experiences of disenfranchisement as a butch lesbian, she became a feminist poet, highly-regarded in underground circles before achieving public fame. A major influe ...

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 Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of ...

for ''Axe Handles: Poems'' *

Howard Schwartz Howard Schwartz (born April 21, 1945, in St. Louis, Missouri) is a widely regarded folklorist, author, poet, and editor of dozens of books. He has won the international Koret Jewish Book Award, for the book ''Before You Were Born'', and won a 2 ...

, Mark Podwal for ''The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman'' *

Imamu Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous bo ...

for ''Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men'' * Jesús Colón for ''A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches'' *

Joseph Bruchac Joseph Bruchac (born October 16, 1942) is an American writer and storyteller based in New York. He writes about Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a particular focus on northeastern Native American and Anglo-American lives and folklore. He ...

for ''Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets'' *

Maurice Kenny Maurice Frank Kenny (August 16, 1929 – April 16, 2016) was an American poet who identified as Mohawk descent. Life Maurice Frank Kenny was born on August 16, 1929, in Watertown, New York. He identified his father as being of Mohawk and I ...

for ''The Mama Poems'' * Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for ''The heat bird'' * Miné Okubo for ''Citizen 13660'' *

Paule Marshall Paule Marshall (April 9, 1929 – August 12, 2019) was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel '' Brown Girl, Brownstones''. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant. Life and career Marshall w ...

for ''

Praisesong for the Widow ''Praisesong for the Widow'' is a 1983 novel by Paule Marshall that takes place in the mid-1970s, chronicling the life of Avey Johnson, a 64-year-old African-American widow on a physical and emotional journey in the Caribbean island of Carriacou ...

'' *

Ruthanne Lum McCunn Ruthanne Lum McCunn () (née Drysdale; born February 21, 1946) is an American novelist and editor of Chinese and Scottish descent. Early life Ruthanne Lum McCunn was born as Roxey Drysdale on February 21, 1946, in Chinatown, San Francisco and rai ...

, 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 Angela Jackson (born July 25, 1951) is an American poet, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jackson became the Illinois Poet Laureate in 2020. Biography Angela Jackson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the fifth of nine c ...

for ''Solo in the Box Car Third Floor E'' *

Arnold Genthe Arnold Genthe (8 January 1869 – 9 August 1942) was a German-American photographer, best known for his photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and his portraits of noted people, from politicians and sociali ...

John Kuo Wei Tchen John Kuo Wei Tchen, also known as Jack, is a historian of Chinese American history and the Inaugural Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and Humanities at Rutgers University. Biography Tchen received his B.A. at the University of Wisconsin� ...

for ''Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown'' * Colleen J. McElroy for ''Queen of the Ebony Isles'' *

Gary Soto Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Life and career Soto was born to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910–1957) and Angie Soto (1924-). In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaqui ...

for '' Living Up The Street'' * Peter Irons for ''Justice at War'' *

Keiho Soga Yasutaro (Keiho) Soga (相賀安太郎渓芳, March 18, 1873 Tokyo - March 7, 1957) was a Hawaiian Issei journalist, poet and activist. He was a community leader among Hawaii's Japanese residents, serving as chief editor of the '' Nippu Jiji'' ...

, Taisanboku Mori,

Sojin Takei Park So-jin (born May 21, 1986), better known mononymously as Sojin, is a South Korean singer and actress. She is best known as the leader of South Korean girl group Girl's Day. Early life and education Park So-jin was born on May 21, 1986, ...

Muin Ozaki Muin may refer to: People * , Filipino diplomat * Muin Bek Hafeez (born 1996), Indian basketball player * Muin Bseiso * Muin J. Khoury, American geneticist and epidemiologist Other * Muin (letter) (ᚋ), eleventh letter of the Ogham alphabet * M ...

for ''Poets Behind Barbed Wire'' *

Louise Erdrich Louise Erdrich ( ; born Karen Louise Erdrich, June 7, 1954) is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian ...

for ''

Love Medicine ''Love Medicine'' is Louise Erdrich's debut novel, first published in 1984. Erdrich revised and expanded the novel in subsequent 1993 and 2009 editions. The book follows the lives of five interconnected Ojibwe families living on fictional reservat ...

'', a novel * Maureen Owen for ''Amelia Earhart'' *

May Sarton May Sarton was the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995), a Belgian-American poet, novelist and memoirist. Although her best work is strongly personalised with erotic female imagery, she resisted the label of ‘lesbi ...

for ''At Seventy: A Journal'' * Robert Edward Duncan for ''Ground Work: Before the War'' * Ron Jones for ''Say Ray'' *

Sandra Cisneros Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel, ''The House on Mango Street'' (1983), and her subsequent short story collection, '' Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories'' (1991). Her work e ...

for ''

The House on Mango Street ''The House on Mango Street'' is a 1984 novel by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros. Structured as a series of vignettes, it tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a 12-year-old Chicana girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. Based ...

'' *

Sonia Sanchez Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver; September 9, 1934) is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays ...

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 Cherríe Moraga (born September 25, 1952) is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English. Moraga is also a founding m ...

Gloria Anzaldúa Gloria may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music Christian liturgy and music * Gloria in excelsis Deo, the Greater Doxology, a hymn of praise * Gloria Patri, the Lesser Doxology, a short hymn of praise ** Gloria (Handel) ** Gloria (Jenkins ...

for '' This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color'' *

Helen Barolini Helen Barolini (born November 18, 1925) is an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often writes on issues of Italian-American identity.How to count American immigrant generations is a subject ...

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 Raymond Federman (May 15, 1928 – October 6, 2009) was a French–American novelist and academic, known also for poetry, essays, translations, and criticism. He held positions at the University at Buffalo from 1973 to 1999, when he was app ...

for ''Smiles on Washington Square: A Love Story of Sorts'' * Susan Howe for ''My Emily Dickinson'' *

Terence Winch Terence Patrick Winch is an Irish-American poet, writer and musician. Biography Winch was born in New York City in 1945. He grew up in an Irish neighborhood in the Bronx, the child of Irish immigrants. In 1971, he moved to Washington, DC, where h ...

for ''Irish Musicians/American Friends'' *

Toshio Mori Toshio Mori (March 3, 1910 – 1980) was an American author, best known for being one of the earliest (and perhaps the first) Japanese–American writers to publish a book of fiction. He participated in drawing the UFO Robo Grendizer, the J ...

for ''Yokohama, California'' 1987 * Ai for ''SIN'' *

Ana Castillo Ana Castillo (born June 15, 1953) is a Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Considered one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, Castillo is known for her experimen ...

for ''The Mixquiahuala Letters'' * Cyn Zarco for ''Circumnavigations'' * 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 Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic and author. He wrote for ''The Village Voice'' from 1973; his "Weather Bird" column ended in 2003. In 1986 Gary Giddins and John Lewis created the American Jazz Orchestra which presented concerts using a ...

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 ''Fools Crow'' is a 1986 novel written by Native American author James Welch (writer), James Welch. Set in Montana shortly after the American Civil War, Civil War, this novel tells of White Man's Dog (later known as Fools Crow), a young Blackfeet ...

'' * John Wieners for ''Selected Poems: 1958–1984'' *

Juan Felipe Herrera Juan Felipe Herrera (born in December 27, 1948) is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers ...

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 Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898 – December 15, 1987) was an African American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and ci ...

, Cynthia Stokes Brown for ''Ready from Within: A First Person Narrative'' *

Terry McMillan Terry McMillan (born October 18, 1951) is an American novelist. Her work centers around the experiences of Black women in the United States. Early life McMillan was born in Port Huron, Michigan. She received a B.A. in journalism in 1977 from ...

for ''Mama'' 1988 * Allison Blakely for ''Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought'' *

Charles Olson Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...

for ''The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems'' * Daisy Bates for ''The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir'' *

David Halberstam David Halberstam (April 10, 1934 April 23, 2007) was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, Korean War, and late ...

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'' *

Ronald Sukenick Ronald Sukenick (July 14, 1932 – July 22, 2004) was an American writer and literary theorist. Life Sukenick was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where his father was a dentist. He graduated from Midwood High School and Cornell University b ...

for ''Down and in: Life in the Underground'' * Salvatore La Puma for ''The Boys of Bensonhurst'' *

for ''

Beloved Beloved may refer to: Books * ''Beloved'' (novel), a 1987 novel by Toni Morrison * ''The Beloved'' (Faulkner novel), a 2012 novel by Australian author Annah Faulkner *''Beloved'', a 1993 historical romance about Zenobia, by Bertrice Small Film ...

'' *

Wing Tek Lum Wing Tek Lum (Chinese: 林永得; born November 11, 1946 Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American poet. Together with a brother he also manages a family-owned real estate company, Lum Yip Kee, Ltd. Life He graduated from Brown University in 1969, where ...

, Tek Lum Lum for ''Expounding the Doubtful Points'' 1989 * Alma Luz Villanueva for ''The Ultraviolet Sky'' * Askia M. Touré for ''From the Pyramids to the Projects: Poems of Genocide and Resistance!'' *

Audre Lorde Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," wh ...

for ''A Burst of Light'' * Carolyn Lau for ''Wode Shuofa: My Way of Speaking'' *

Emory Elliott Emory Bernard Elliott (October 30, 1942 – March 31, 2009) was an American professor of American literature at UC Riverside. Elliott was known in particular for advocating the expansion of the literary canon to include a more diverse range o ...

for ''Columbia Literary History of the United States'' *

Eduardo Galeano Eduardo Hughes Galeano (; 3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015) was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist considered, among other things, "global soccer's pre-eminent man of letters" and "a literary giant of the Latin American left". Galea ...

for ''Genesis'' *

for '' The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co.'' *

Henry Louis Gates Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Amer ...

for '' The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism'' *

for ''

Eva Luna ''Eva Luna'' is a novel written by Chilean novelist Isabel Allende in 1987 and translated from Spanish to English by Margaret Sayers Peden. Eva Luna takes us into the life of the eponymous protagonist, an orphan who grows up in an unidentified ...

'' * J. California Cooper for ''Homemade Love'' * Jennifer Stone for ''Stone's Throw'' * Josephine Gattuso Hendin for ''The Right Thing to Do'' *

Leslie Scalapino Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was an American poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. Writes Hejinian: ...

for ''way'' * Shuntaro Tanikawa for ''Floating the River in Melancholy'' * Charles Fanning for ''The Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction'' *

William Minoru Hohri William Minoru Hohri (March 13, 1927 – November 12, 2010) was an American political activist and the lead plaintiff in the National Council for Japanese American Redress lawsuit seeking monetary reparations for the internment of Japanese Ameri ...

for ''Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese American Redress''

1990 to 1999

1990 *

Adrienne Kennedy Adrienne Kennedy (born September 13, 1931) is an American playwright.Peterson, Jane T., and Suzanne Bennett. "Adrienne Kennedy". ''Women Playwrights of Diversity''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. 201–205. She is best known for '' Funnyhous ...

for ''People Who Led to My Plays'' *

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (September 14, 1934 – April 24, 2002) was an American journalist, essayist and memoirist. She is best known for her autobiographical work, particularly her account of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, and for her tr ...

for ''Italian Days'' * Daniela Gioseffi for ''Women on War (Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age)'' *

Elizabeth Woody Elizabeth Woody (born 1959) is an American Navajo/ Warm Springs/ Wasco/Yakama artist, author, and educator. In March 2016, she was the first Native American to be named poet laureate of Oregon by Governor Kate Brown. Background Elizabeth Woody ...

for ''Hand into Stone: Poems'' * Hualing Nieh for ''Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China'' * Itabari Njeri for ''Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone'' * James M. Freeman for ''Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives'' * John C. Walter,

J. Raymond Jones John Raymond Jones (November 19, 1899 – June 9, 1991) was the last Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall, a New York City Councilman for Harlem, a district leader, ran the Carver Democratic Club, and was Adam Clayton Powell's campaign manager in 1958, ...

for ''The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920–1970'' * John Norton for ''Light at the End of the Bog'' *

José Emilio González Josemilio González (1918–1990) was a Puerto Rican literary critic and editor. He Went to the University of Puerto Rico, where he graduated in Liberal Arts, with specializations in Spanish, French and Philosophy. in 1940, Earned his Master's De ...

for ''Vivar a Hostos'' *

Sergei Kan Sergei A. Kan (born March 31, 1953, in Moscow) is an American anthropologist known for his research with and writings on the Tlingit people of southeast Alaska, focusing on the potlatch and on the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Tlingit comm ...

for ''Symbolic Immortality: The Tlingit Potlatch of the Nineteenth Century'' * Lloyd A. Thompson for ''Romans and Blacks'' *

Martin Bernal Martin Gardiner Bernal (; 10 March 1937 – 9 June 2013) was a British scholar of modern Chinese political history. He was a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is best known for his work '' Black Athena'', ...

for '' Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization'' * Michelle T. Clinton,

Sesshu Foster Sesshu Foster (born April 5, 1957) is an American poet and novelist. Sesshu Foster is a Japanese-American poet of white and Nisei descent. He grew up on Los Angeles’ East Side and came of age in the primarily Chicano neighborhood of City T ...

for ''Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry'' *

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

for '' Miles: The Autobiography'' * Paula Gunn Allen for ''Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women'' *

Shirley Geok-lin Lim Shirley Geok-lin Lim (born 1944) is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, ''Crossing The Peninsula'', published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a ...

, Mayumi Tsutakawa, Margarita Donnelly for ''The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's Anthology'' 1991 * Alejandro Murguía for ''Southern Front'' *

Bell Hooks Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author and social activist who was Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She is best known for her writings on ...

for ''Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics'' * Bruce Wright for ''Black Robes, White Justice: Why Our Legal System Doesn't Work for Blacks'' * Charley Trujillo for ''Soldados: Chicanos in Viet Nam'' * D. H. Melhem for ''Heroism in the New Black Poetry: Introductions & Interviews'' * Deborah Keenan for ''Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile'' *

Jessica Hagedorn Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (born 1949) is an American playwright, writer, poet, and multimedia performance artist. Biography Hagedorn is an American of mixed descent. She was born in Manila to a Scots-Irish-French-Filipino mother and a Spanish F ...

for '' Dogeaters'' *

John Edgar Wideman John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. He was the first person to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice. His writing is known for experimental techniques and a focus o ...

for ''Philadelphia Fire'', a novel *

for ''In Mad Love and War'' *

Karen Tei Yamashita Karen Tei Yamashita ( ja, 山下てい ; born January 8, 1951) is a Japanese-American writer. Early life Yamashita was born on January 8, 1951, in Oakland, California. Career Yamashita is Professor of Literature at the University of Calif ...

for '' Through the Arc of the Rain Forest'' * Lucia Berlin for ''Homesick: New and Selected Stories'' *

Mary Crow Dog Mary Brave Bird, also known as Mary Brave Woman Olguin and Mary Crow Dog (September 26, 1954 – February 14, 2013) was a Sicangu Lakota writer and activist who was a member of the American Indian Movement during the 1970s and participated in some ...

for ''

Lakota Woman ''Lakota Woman'' is a memoir by Mary Brave Bird, a Sicangu Lakota who was formerly known as Mary Crow Dog. Reared on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, she describes her childhood and young adulthood, which included many historical e ...

'' *

Meridel Le Sueur Meridel Le Sueur (February 22, 1900, Murray, Iowa – November 14, 1996, Hudson, Wisconsin) was an American writer associated with the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mot ...

for ''Harvest Song: Collected Essays and Stories'' * Mill Hunk Herald Collective for ''Overtime: Punchin' Out With the Mill Hunk Herald Magazine'' *

Nora Marks Dauenhauer Nora Marks Keixwnéi Dauenhauer (May 8, 1927 – September 25, 2017) was a Tlingit poet, short-story writer, and Tlingit language scholar from Alaska. She won an American Book Award for ''Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 An ...

Richard Dauenhauer Richard Dauenhauer (April 10, 1942 – August 19, 2014) was an American poet, linguist, and translator who married into, and subsequently became an expert on, the Tlingit nation of southeastern Alaska. He was married to the Tlingit poet and schol ...

for ''Haa Tuwunaagu Yis, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory'' * R. Baxter Miller for ''The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes'' *

Thomas Centolella Thomas Centolella is an American poet and educator. He has published four books of poetry and has had many poems published in periodicals including American Poetry Review. He has received awards for his poetry including those from the National Po ...

for ''Terra Firma'' 1992 * A'Lelia Perry Bundles for ''Madam C.J. Walker'' *

Art Spiegelman Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel '' Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade'' and '' Ra ...

for '' The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale'' *

Benjamin Alire Sáenz Benjamin Alire Sáenz (born August 16, 1954) is an American poet, novelist, and writer of children's books. Early life and education Sáenz was raised near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He earned a BA in Humanities and Philosophy from St. Thomas Semi ...

for ''Calendar of Dust'' *

Donna J. Haraway Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Sh ...

for ''Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature'' *

Fritjof Capra Fritjof Capra (born February 1, 1939) is an Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995, he became a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He is on the faculty of Schumacher ...

for ''Belonging to the universe: Explorations on the frontiers of science and spirituality'' * José Antonio Burciaga for ''Undocumented Love/Amor Indocumentado: A Personal Anthology of Poetry'' * Keith Gilyard for '' Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence'' * Lucy Thompson for '' To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman'' *

Norma Field Norma M. Field is an author and emeritus professor of East Asian studies at the University of Chicago. She has taught Premodern Japanese Poetry and Prose, Premodern Japanese Language, and Gender Studies as relating to Japanese women. Her areas o ...

for ''In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century's End'' * Peter Bacho for ''

Cebu Cebu (; ceb, Sugbo), officially the Province of Cebu ( ceb, Lalawigan sa Sugbo; tl, Lalawigan ng Cebu; hil, Kapuroan sang Sugbo), is a province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, and consists of a main island and 16 ...

'' * Peter Kalifornsky for ''Dena'ina Legacy: K'tl'egh'i Sukdu: The Collected Writings of Peter Kalifornsky'' *

Raymond Andrews Raymond Andrews (June 6, 1934 – November 25, 1991) was an African-American novelist. Early life and education Raymond Andrews was born June 6, 1934, in Plainview, Georgia, and grew up in north central Georgia. He was the fourth child of Georg ...

for ''Jessie and Jesus and Cousin Claire'' * Sandra Scofield for ''Beyond Deserving'' *

Sheila Hamanaka Sheila Hamanaka is an American freelance children's author and illustrator. Life Hamanaka is a Sansei Japanese American, the daughter of actor Conrad Yama and Mary Takaoka of the Vaudeville group Taka Sisters. She has two older siblings; the wr ...

for ''Journey'' * Stephen R. Fox for ''The Unknown Internment: An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans During World War II'' * Steven R. Carter for ''Hansberry's Drama: Commitment Amid Complexity,'' *

Verlyn Klinkenborg Verlyn Klinkenborg (born 1952 in Meeker, Colorado) is an American non-fiction author, academic, and former newspaper editor, known for his writings on rural America. Early life and education Klinkenborg was born in Meeker, Colorado and raised ...

for ''The Last Fine Time'' *

William B. Branch William Blackwell Branch (September 11, 1927 – November 3, 2019) was an American playwright who was also involved in many aspects of entertainment, including journalism, media production, editing, a short-lived career acting for television as ...

Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous bo ...

August Wilson August Wilson ( Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called ' (or ...

for ''Black Thunder: An Anthology of African-American Drama'' 1993 * Asake Bomani, Belvie Rooks for ''Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris'' * Christopher Mogil, Peter Woodrow for ''We Gave Away a Fortune'' *

Cornel West Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society an ...

for ''Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times'' * Denise Giardina for ''Unquiet Earth'' * Diane Glancy for ''Claiming Breath'' *

Eugene B. Redmond Eugene B. Redmond (born December 1, 1937, St. Louis)Burton, Jennifer"Eugene Redmond" ''Oxford Companion to African American Literature''. is an American poet, and academic. His poetry is closely connected to the Black Arts Movement and the city ...

for ''The Eye in the Ceiling'' * Francisco X. Alarcón for ''Snake Poems'' * Gerald Graff for ''Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education'' *

Jack Beatty Jack J. Beatty (born May 15, 1945) is a writer, senior editor of '' The Atlantic'', and news analyst for ''On Point'', the national NPR news program. Born and raised in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Beatty attended Boston Latin School, ...

for ''The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley'' * Leroy V. Quintana for ''The History of Home'' * Katherine Peter for ''Neets'aii Gwiindaii: Living in the Chandalar Country'' *

Nelson George Nelson George (born September 1, 1957) is an American author, columnist, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker. He has been nominated twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Biography George attended St. John's Univers ...

for ''Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball'' *

Ninotchka Rosca Ninotchka Rosca (born December 17, 1946, in the Philippines) is a Filipina feminist, author, journalist, and human rights activist. best known for her 1988 novel '' State of War'' and for her activism, especially during the Martial Law dictatorsh ...

for ''Twice Blessed'', a novel 1994 * Giose Rimanelli for ''Benedetta in Guysterland'' *

Eric Drooker Eric Drooker is an American painter, graphic novelist, and frequent cover artist for ''The New Yorker''. He conceived and designed the animation for the film ''Howl'' (2010). Drooker grew up in Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town, adjacent to the Lower E ...

for ''Flood!: A Novel in Pictures'' * Graciela Limón for ''In Search of Bernabe'' * Gregory J. Reed for ''Economic Empowerment Through the Church'' * Janet Campbell Hale for ''Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter'' *

Jill Nelson Jill Nelson (born June 14, 1952) is a prominent African-American journalist and novelist. She has written several books, including the autobiographical ''Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience'', which won an American Book Award. She wa ...

for ''Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience'' *

Lawson Fusao Inada Lawson Fusao Inada (born May 26, 1938) is a Japanese American poet. He was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon. Early life Born May 26, 1938, Inada is a third-generation Japanese American (''Sansei''). His father, Fusaji, worked as a d ...

for ''Legends from Camp'' * Nicole Blackman for ''Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe'' *

Paul Gilroy Paul Gilroy (born 16 February 1956) is an English sociologist and cultural studies scholar who is the founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at University College, London (UCL). Gilroy is the 2019 ...

for ''The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness'' *

Ronald Takaki Ronald Toshiyuki Takaki (April 12, 1939 – May 26, 2009) was an American academic, historian, ethnographer and author. Born in pre-statehood Hawaii, Takaki studied at the College of Wooster and completed his doctorate in American history at t ...

for '' A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America'' * Rose L. Glickman for ''Daughters of Feminists'' * Tino Villanueva for ''Scene from the Movie GIANT'' * Virginia L. Kroll for ''Wood-Hoopoe Willie'' 1995 * Abraham Rodriguez for ''Spidertown'', a novel * Herb Boyd, Robert L. Allen for ''Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America—An Anthology'' * Denise Chávez for ''Face of an Angel'' * John Egerton for ''Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South'' * John Ross for ''Rebellion from the Roots: Indian Uprising in Chiapas'' * Thomas Avena for ''Life Sentences: Writers, Artists, and AIDS'' * Linda Raymond for ''Rocking the Babies'', a novel * Li-Young Lee for ''The Winged Seed: A Remembrance'' * Marianna De Marco Torgovnick for ''Crossing Ocean Parkway'' *

Marnie Mueller Marnie Mueller (born Tule Lake War Relocation Center) is an American novelist. Life In 1963 she joined the Peace Corps, serving two years in Guayaquil, Ecuador. She worked for WBAI as Programming Director, but resigned in 1977, over staff cuts. ...

for ''Green Fires: Assault on Eden: A Novel of the Ecuadorian Rainforest'' * Peter Quinn for ''Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York'' * Sandra Martz for ''I Am Becoming the Woman I've Wanted'' * Gordon Henry Jr. for ''The Light People'' *

Tricia Rose Tricia Rose (born October 18, 1962) is an American sociologist and author who pioneered scholarship on hip hop. Her studies mainly probe the intersectionality of pop music and gender. Now at Brown University, she is a professor of Africana Stud ...

for '' Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America'' 1996 * Agate Nesaule for '' A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile'' *

Arthur Sze Arthur Sze (; ; born December 1, 1950) is an American poet, translator, and professor. Since 1972, he has published ten collections of poetry. Sze's ninth collection ''Compass Rose'' (2014) was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Sz ...

for ''Archipelago'' * Chang-Rae Lee for ''

Native Speaker Native Speaker may refer to: * ''Native Speaker'' (novel), a 1995 novel by Chang-Rae Lee * ''Native Speaker'' (album), a 2011 album by Canadian band Braids * Native speaker, a person using their first language or mother tongue {{disambigua ...

'' *

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (born Chitralekha Banerjee, 1956) is an Indian-born American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection, ''Arrang ...

for ''Arranged Marriage'' * E. J. Miller Laino for ''Girl Hurt'' *

Glenn C. Loury Glenn Cartman Loury (born September 3, 1948) is an American economist, academic, and author. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005. At the age of ...

for ''One by One from the Inside Out: Race and Responsibility in America'' *

James W. Loewen James William Loewen (February 6, 1942August 19, 2021) was an American sociologist, historian, and author. He was best known for his 1995 book, '' Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong''. Early life Loewen ...

for ''Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong'' *

Joe Sacco Joe Sacco (; born October 2, 1960) is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books '' Palestine'' (1996) and '' Footnotes in Gaza'' (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian rela ...

for ''Palestine'' * Kimiko Hahn for ''The Unbearable Heart'' * Maria Espinosa for ''Longing'' * Robert Viscusi for ''Astoria'' *

Sherman Alexie Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from se ...

for ''

Reservation Blues ''Reservation Blues'' is a 1995 novel by American writer Sherman Alexie, a member of the Spokane and Coeur d'Alene tribes. Plot summary The novel follows the story of the rise and fall of Coyote Springs, a rock and blues band of Spokane Indians ...

'' * Ron Sakolsky, Fred Weihan Ho for ''Sounding Off!: Music as Resistance / Rebellion / Revolution'' * Stephanie Cowell for ''The Physician of London: The Second Part of the Seventeenth-Century Trilogy of Nicholas Cooke'' * William H. Gass for ''The Tunnel'' 1997 * Alurista for ''Et Tu ... Raza'' * Derrick Bell for ''Gospel Choirs: Psalms Of Survival In An Alien Land Called Home'' * Dorothy Barresi for ''The Post-Rapture Diner'' *

Guillermo Gómez-Peña Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a Chicano, Mexican/Chicano performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. Gómez-Peña has created work in multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, photography and installation art. His f ...

for ''The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems, and Loqueras for the End of the Century'' *

Louis Owens Louis Dean Owens ( Lompoc July 18, 1948 - Albuquerque, July 25, 2002) was a novelist and scholar who claimed Choctaw, Cherokee, and Irish-American descent. He is known for a series of Native-themed mystery novels and for his contributions to th ...

for ''Nightland'' *

Martín Espada Martín Espada (born 1957) is a Puerto Rican-American poet, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems. Life and career Espada was born ...

for ''Imagine the Angels of Bread: Poems'' * Montserrat Fontes for ''Dreams of the Centaur'', a novel * Noel Ignatiev for ''Race Traitor'' *

for ''Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands'' * Sunaina Maira for ''Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America'' *

Thulani Davis Thulani Davis (born 1949) is an American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. She is a graduate of Barnard College and attended graduate school at both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. In ...

for ''Maker of Saints'' * Tom De Haven for ''Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies'', a novel * William M. Banks for ''Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life'' * Brenda Knight for ''Women of the Beat Generation: The Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution'' 1998 *

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, ''Dog Road Woman'', won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books ...

for ''Dog Road Woman'' * Angela Y. Davis for ''Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday'' * Brenda Marie Osbey for ''All Saints: New and Selected Poems'' *

for ''

Underworld The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underwo ...

'' * Jim Barnes for ''On Native Ground: Memoirs and Impressions'' * John A. Williams for ''Safari West: Poems'' *

Nancy Rawles Nancy Rawles is an American playwright, novelist, and teacher. She is a 2006 recipient of the Alex Awards. Life Rawles grew up in Los Angeles. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Journalism. Rawles studied play writing ...

for ''Love Like Gumbo'' *

Nora Okja Keller Nora Okja Keller (born 22 December 1966, in Seoul, South Korea) is a Korean American author. Her 1997 breakthrough work of fiction, ''Comfort Woman'', and her second book (2002), ''Fox Girl'', focus on multigenerational trauma resulting from Ko ...

for ''Comfort Woman'' * Sandra Benitez for ''Bitter Grounds'', a novel * Scott DeVeaux for ''The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History'' * Thomas Lynch for ''The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade'' 1999 *

Alice McDermott Alice McDermott (born June 27, 1953) is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel ''Charming Billy'' she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. McDermott is Johns Hopkins University's Rich ...

for ''Charming Billy'' * Anna Linzer for ''Ghost Dancing'' * Brian Ward for ''Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations'' * Chiori Santiago for ''Home to Medicine Mountain'' * E. Donald Two-Rivers for ''Survivor's Medicine: Short Stories'' * Edwidge Danticat for ''The Farming of Bones'' * Judith Roche, Meg McHutchison for ''First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim'' * Gioia Timpanelli for ''Sometimes the Soul: Two Novellas of Sicily'' *

Gloria Naylor Gloria Naylor (January 25, 1950 – September 28, 2016) was an American novelist, known for novels including '' The Women of Brewster Place'' (1982)'', Linden Hills'' (1985) and '' Mama Day'' (1988)''.'' Early life and education Naylor was bor ...

for ''The Men of Brewster Place'', a novel *

for ''The Last Paradise'' * Jerry Lipka, Gerald V. Mohatt, Ciulistet Group for ''Transforming the Culture of Schools: Yup¡k Eskimo Examples'' *

Trey Ellis Trey Ellis (born 1962) is an American novelist, screenwriter, professor, playwright, and essayist. He was born in Washington D.C. and graduated from Hopkins School and Phillips Academy, Andover, where he studied under Alexander Theroux before at ...

for ''Right Here, Right Now'' * Josip Novakovich for ''Salvation and Other Disasters'' * Lauro Flores for ''The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S. Hispanic Literature'' * Luís Alberto Urrea for ''Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life'' *

for ''Hip Hop America: Hip Hop and the Molding of Black Generation X'' * Speer Morgan for ''The Freshour Cylinders'' * Gary Gach for ''What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop'' * Chiori Santiago, author, Judith Lowry, illustrator, ''Home to Medicine Mountain''
The Booksellers presentation begins with unattributed quotation from the Awards press release, a primary source used here.

2000 to 2009

;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 This is a comprehensive list of characters from the Channel 4 soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. ...

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 Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is '' M ...

'' *

for '' The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R.R. Co.'' *

Helen Thomas Helen Amelia Thomas (August 4, 1920 – July 20, 2013) was an American reporter and author, and a long serving member of the White House press corps. She covered the White House during the administrations of ten U.S. presidents—from th ...

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 Lois-Ann Yamanaka (born September 7, 1961) is an American poet and novelist from Hawaii. Many of her literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues. In particular, her works confro ...

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 Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...

for ''The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975–2005'' * Editor/Publisher:

* Jack E. White, Journalism *

, Lifetime Achievement *

, Lifetime Achievement ;2001 * Amanda J. Cobb for ''Listening to Our Grandmothers' Stories: The Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females, 1852–1949'' *

Andrea Dworkin Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen solo ...

for ''Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation'' *

Carolyne Wright Carolyne Wright (born in 1949, in Bellingham, Washington) is an American poet. Life She studied at Seattle University, New York University, and graduated from Syracuse University with master's and doctoral degrees. She has held visiting creativ ...

for ''Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire'' *

Chalmers Johnson Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010) was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics, and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consu ...

for ''Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire'' * Cheri Register for ''Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir'' *

Chris Ware Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware (born December 28, 1967) is an American cartoonist known for his '' Acme Novelty Library'' series (begun 1994) and the graphic novels ''Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth'' (2000), ''Building Stories'' (201 ...

for ''Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth'' * Diana Garcia for ''When Living Was a Labor Camp'' * Elizabeth Nunez for ''Bruised Hibiscus'' *

Janet McAdams Janet McAdams (born 1957) is an American poet, who wrote ''The Island of Lost Luggage'' (University of Arizona Press) which received an American Book Award in 2001 and the First Book Award for Poetry from the Native Writers' Circle of the America ...

for ''Island of Lost Luggage'' *

Philip Whalen Philip Glenn Whalen (October 20, 1923 – June 26, 2002) was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation. Biography Born in Portland, Oregon, Whalen grew up in The Dalles fr ...

for ''Overtime: Selected Poems'' * Russell Leong for ''Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories'' * Sandra M. Gilbert for ''Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems, 1969–1999'' *

Ted Joans Theodore Joans (July 4, 1928 – April 25, 2003) was an American jazz poet, surrealist, trumpeter, and painter, who from the 1960s spent periods of time travelling in Europe and Africa. His work stands at the intersection of several avant-garde ...

for ''Teducation'' * Tillie Olsen for ''Silences'' * William S. Penn for ''Killing Time With Strangers'' *

Malcolm Margolin Malcolm Margolin (born October 27, 1940) is an author, publisher, and former executive director of Heyday Books, an independent nonprofit publisher and cultural institution in Berkeley, California. From his founding of Heyday in 1974 until his re ...

, Editor *

, Lifetime Achievement * Tillie Olsen, Lifetime Achievement *

Lifetime Achievement ;2002 * Aaron A. Abeyta, ''Colcha'' *

Susanne Antonetta Susanne Antonetta is the pen name of Suzanne Paola (born September 29, 1956, in Georgia), an American poet and author who is most widely known for her book ''Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir''. In 2001, ''Body Toxic'' was named by the ''New Y ...

, ''The Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir'' *

Rilla Askew Rilla Askew (born 1951) is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in Poteau, in the Sans Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, and grew up in the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Early life and education Askew graduated f ...

, ''Fire in Beulah'' *

Tananarive Due Tananarive Priscilla Due ( ) (born January 5, 1966) is an American author and educator. Due won the American Book Award for her novel '' The Living Blood''. She is also known as a film historian with expertise in Black horror. Due teaches a cours ...

, ''The Living Blood'' * Gloria Frym, ''Homeless at Home'' *

Dana Gioia Michael Dana Gioia (; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, literary translator, and essayist. Since the early 1980s, Gioia has been considered part of the literary movements within American poetry known as New Forma ...

, ''Interrogations at Noon'' * LeAnne Howe, '' Shell Shaker'' * Alex Kuo, ''Lipstick and Other Stories'' * Michael N. Nagler, ''Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future'' * Donald Phelps, ''Reading the Funnies : Looking at Great Cartoonists Throughout the First Half of the 20th Century'' *

, ''The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems, 1990–2000'' * Jessel Miller, ''Angels in the Vineyards'' * Lerone Bennett, Lifetime Achievement * Jack Hirschman, Lifetime Achievement ;2003 * Kevin Baker, ''Paradise Alley'' * Debra Magpie Earling, ''Perma Red'' *

Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American political activist, and former United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the '' Pen ...

, ''Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers'' * Rick Heide, ed., ''Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California'' * Igor Krupnik, Willis Walunga, Vera Metcalf, and Lars Krutak, eds, ''Akuzilleput Igaqullghet, Our Words Put to Paper: Sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History'' * Alejandro Murguía, ''This War Called Love: Nine Stories'' * Jack Newfield, ''The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania'' * Joseph Papaleo, ''Italian Stories'' *

Eric Porter Eric Richard Porter (8 April 192815 May 1995) was an English actor of stage, film and television. Early life Porter was born in Shepherd's Bush, London, to bus conductor Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth (née Spall). His parents hope ...

, ''What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists'' * Jewell Parker Rhodes, ''Douglass' Women'', a novel *

Rachel Simon Rachel Simon (born 1959 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American author of both fiction and non-fiction. Her six books include the 2011 novel ''The Story of Beautiful Girl,'' and the 2002 memoir ''Riding the Bus with My Sister''. Her work has been a ...

, ''Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey'' * Velma Wallis, ''Raising Ourselves: A Gwich'in Coming of Age Story from the Yukon River'' * Max Rodriguez, ''QBR: The Black Book Review'' ;2004 *

Diana Abu-Jaber Diana Abu-Jaber ( ar, ديانا أبو جابر) is an American author and a professor at Portland State University. Early life and education Abu-Jaber was born in Syracuse, New York. Her father was Jordanian with a Palestinian Jerusalemite mot ...

, ''Crescent'', a novel * David Cole, ''Enemy Aliens: Double Standards And Constitutional Freedoms In The War On Terrorism'' * Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden, ''Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America'' * Kristin Hunter Lattany, ''Breaking Away'' * A. Robert Lee, ''Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions'' * Diane Sher Lutovich, ''What I Stole'' *

Ruth Ozeki Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. Her books and films, including the novels '' My Year of Meats'' (1998), '' All Over Creation'' (2003), '' A Tale for the Time Being'' (2013), and ''The Book of Form a ...

, ''All Over Creation'' * Renato Rosaldo, ''Prayer to Spider Woman / Rezo a la Mujer Arana'' * Scott Saul, ''Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties'' * Michael Walsh, ''And All the Saints'' ;2005 * Bernard W. Bell, ''The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots And Modern Literary Branches'' * Cecelie Berry, ''Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood'' * Jeff Chang, '' Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation'' * Julie Chibbaro, ''Redemption'' * Richard A. Clarke, ''Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror'' * Alisha S. Drabek and Karen R. Adams, ''The Red Cedar of Afognak, A Driftwood Journey'' * Ralph M. Flores, ''The Horse in the Kitchen: Stories of a Mexican-American Family'' * Hiroshi Kashiwagi, ''Swimming in the American: A Memoir And Selected Writings'' *

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. (born January 17, 1954) is an American environmental lawyer and author known for promoting anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories. Kennedy is a son of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of President ...

, ''Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy'' * Don Lee, ''Country of Origin'', a novel * Lamont B. Steptoe, ''A Long Movie of Shadows'' * Don West, ''No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems'', eds Jeff Biggers and George Brosi * Journalism: Bill Berkowitz ;2006 * MacKenzie Bezos, ''The Testing of Luther Albright'', a novel *

Matt Briggs Matt Briggs (born 1970) is an American novelist and short story writer. Biography Matt Briggs was born in Seattle, Washington, which he still calls home. He grew up in the Snoqualmie Valley raised by working-class, counter-culture parents who cu ...

, ''Shoot the Buffalo'' * David P. Diaz, ''The White Tortilla: Reflections of a Second-Generation Mexican-American'' * Darryl Dickson-Carr, ''The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction'' * Thomas Ferraro, ''Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America'' * Tim Z. Hernandez, ''Skin Tax'' *

Josh Kun Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is Professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. He also holds a joint appoint ...

, ''Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America'' * P. Lewis, ''Nate'' * Peter Metcalfe, ''Gumboot Determination: The Story of the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium'' * Kevin J. Mullen, ''The Toughest Gang in Town: Police Stories from Old San Francisco'' *

Doris Seale Doris Seale (born Doris Marion Seale; July 10, 1936 – February 17, 2017) was a Santee Dakota, Abenaki and Cree librarian, poet, writer, and educator. She worked as a librarian for 45 years. She has written about Native Americans sending posit ...

and Beverly Slapin, eds., ''A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children'' * Matthew Shenoda, ''Somewhere Else'' * Carlton T. Spiller, ''Scalding Heart'' * Chris Hamilton-Emery, Editor * Jay Wright, Lifetime Achievement ;2007 *

Daniel Cassidy Daniel Cassidy (1943 – October 11, 2008) was an American writer, filmmaker, musician, and academic. He is known for his 2007 book ''How the Irish Invented Slang'' in which he suggests that many American slang words are of Irish origin. His theo ...

, ''How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads'' * Michael Eric Dyson, ''Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster'' *

Rigoberto González Rigoberto González (born July 18, 1970) is an American writer and book critic. He is an editor and author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual children's books, and self-identifies in his writing as a gay Chicano. His most recent projec ...

, ''Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa'' *

Reyna Grande Reyna Grande (born 7 September 1975, Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico) is a Mexican author living in the United States. Biography Grande grew up in poverty with her two siblings in Iguala, Guerrero. When she was under five years old, her father moved ...

, ''Across a Hundred Mountains'', a novel *

Ernestine Hayes Ernestine Saankaláxt Hayes (born 1945) belongs to the Tlingit, Kaagwaaataan clan, also known as the wolf house, representing the Tlingit#Culture, Eagle side of the Tlingit Nation. Hayes is a Tlingit author and an Emerita retired professor at the ...

, ''Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir'' * Patricia Klindienst, ''The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans'' * Gary Panter, ''Jimbo's Inferno'' * Jeffrey F. L. Partridge, ''Beyond Literary Chinatown'' * Judith Roche, ''Wisdom of the Body'' * Kali VanBaale, ''The Space Between'' ;2008 *

Moustafa Bayoumi Moustafa Bayoumi (born 1966) is an American writer, journalist, and professor. He is of Egyptian descent. He is based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Biography Moustafa Bayo ...

, ''How Does It Feel to Be a Problem Being Young and Arab in America'' *

Douglas A. Blackmon Douglas A. Blackmon (born 1964) is an American writer and journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book, '' Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.'' Early life and education B ...

, '' Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II'' * Jonathan Curiel, ''Al’ America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots'' *

, and Lydia T. Black. ''Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká''. ''Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804'' * Maria Mazziotti Gillan, ''All That Lies Between Us'' *

Nikki Giovanni Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets,Jane M. Barstow, Yolanda Williams Page (eds)"Nikki Giovanni" ''E ...

, ''The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968–1998'' *

C. S. Giscombe C. S. Giscombe (born 1950 Dayton, Ohio) is an African-American poet, essayist, and professor of English at University of California, Berkeley. Life A graduate of SUNY at Albany and Cornell University where he earned degrees, he was editor of ''E ...

, ''Prairie Style'' *

, ''Where I Must Go'', a novel * L. Luis Lopez, ''Each Month I Sing'' * Tom Lutz, ''Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America'' * Fae Myenne Ng, ''Steer Toward Rock'' * Yuko Taniguchi, ''The Ocean in the Closet'' * Lorenzo Thomas, ''Don't Deny My Name: Words and Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition'', ed. Aldon Lynn Nielsen * Frank B. Wilderson III, ''Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid'' *

J. J. Phillips Jane J. Phillips (born April 2, 1944), known as J. J. Phillips,Alan Govenar"Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale" in ''Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues'', Chicago Review Press, 2010, p. 156. is an African-American poet, novelist and civil rights activi ...

, Lifetime Achievement ;2009 * Houston A. Baker, Jr., ''Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Right Era'' * Danit Brown, ''Ask for a Convertible'' *

Jericho Brown Jericho Brown (born April 14, 1976) is an American poet and writer. Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Brown has worked as an educator at institutions such as University of Houston, San Diego State University, and Emory University. His poe ...

, ''Please'' * José Antonio Burciaga, ''The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of José Antonio Burciaga'', eds Mimi R. Gladstein and Daniel Chacón * Claire Hope Cummings, ''Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds'' * Stella Pope Duarte, ''If I Die in Juarez'' *

Linda Gregg Linda Alouise Gregg (September 9, 1942 – March 20, 2019) was an American poet. Biography She was born in Suffern, New York. Ms. Gregg grew up on the other side of the country, in Marin County, California. She received both her Bachelor of Ar ...

, ''All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems'' *

Suheir Hammad Suheir Hammad (born October 25, 1973) is an American poet, author, actress, performer, and political activist. Biography She was born in Amman, Jordan. Her parents were Palestinian refugees who immigrated along with their daughter to Brooklyn, N ...

, ''Breaking Poems'' * Richard Holmes, ''The Age of Wonder'' * George E. Lewis, ''A Power Stronger than Itself: The A.A.C.M. and American Experimental Music'' * Patricia Santana, ''Ghosts of El Grullo'' *

Jack Spicer Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 – August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'' won the American Book Award for poetry. ...

, ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', ed.

Peter Gizzi Peter Gizzi (born 1959 in Alma, Michigan) is an American poet, essayist, editor and teacher. He attended New York University, Brown University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. Life Gizzi was born in Alma, Michigan to an Italian ...

and

Kevin Killian Kevin Killian (December 24, 1952 – June 15, 2019) was an American poet, author, editor, and playwright primarily of LGBT literature. ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, w ...

* Miguel Algarín, Lifetime Achievement

2010 to 2019

;2010 *

, ''Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music'' *

Sherwin Bitsui Sherwin Bitsui is a Navajo writer and poet. His book, ''Flood Song'', won the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Life and Education Bitsui was born in 1974. He is originally from Whitecone, Arizona. He is Navajo; his mother was ...

, ''Flood Song'' * Nancy Carnevale, ''A New Language, A New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890–1945'' *

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

, ''Zeitoun'' *

, ''World Ball Notebook'' * Stephen D. Gutierrez, ''Live from Fresno y Los'' *

Victor LaValle Victor LaValle (born February 3, 1972) is an American author. He is the author of a short-story collection, ''Slapboxing with Jesus'', and four novels, ''The Ecstatic,'' ''Big Machine,'' ''The Devil in Silver,'' and '' The Changeling''. His fanta ...

, ''The Big Machine'' * François Mandeville, ''This Is What They Say'', translated by Ron Scollon from

Chipewyan The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...

* Bich Minh Nguyen, ''Short Girls'' * Franklin Rosemont and

, eds., ''Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora'' *

and Jeffrey C. Robinson, eds., ''Poems for the Millennium: Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry'' * Kathryn Waddell Takara, ''Pacific Raven: Hawai`i Poems'' * Pamela Uschuk, ''Crazy Love: New Poems'' * Katha Politt, Lifetime Achievement *

, Lifetime Achievement ;2011 * Keith Gilyard, ''John Oliver Killens'' * Akbar Ahmed, ''Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam'' *

Camille Dungy Camille T. Dungy (born 1972) is an American poet and professor. Career Born in Denver, Colorado, Dungy graduated from Stanford University (BA) and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she earned her MFA. She is the author of fou ...

, ''Suck on the Marrow'' *

, ''I Hotel'' * William W. Cook and James Tatum, ''African American Writers and Classical Tradition'' * Gerald Vizenor, ''Shrouds of White Earth'' *

Eric Gansworth Eric Gansworth is a Haudenosaunee novelist, poet and visual artist. Early life Gansworth was born in 1965 and is an enrolled citizen of the Onondaga Nation; however, he grew up in the Tuscarora Nation as a descendant of one of two Onondaga ...

, ''Extra Indians'' * Ivan Argüelles, ''The Death of Stalin'' * Geoffrey Alan Argent, ed., ''The Complete Plays of

Jean Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditi ...

: Volume 1: The Fratricides'', translated by Argent from

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

* 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 ''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first perfo ...

, ''Bring Down the Little Birds'' * Luis Valdez, Lifetime Achievement * John A. Williams, Lifetime Achievement ;2012 * Annia Ciezadlo, ''Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War'' * Arlene Kim, ''What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes?'' *

Ed Bok Lee Ed Bok Lee is an American poet and writer. He is the author of three books of poetry, including ''Mitochondrial Night'' (2019), ''Whorled'', the recipient of a 2012 American Book Award and a 2012 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, and ''Real Karaoke P ...

, ''Whorled'' * Adilifu Nama, ''Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes'' *

Rob Nixon Rob or ROB may refer to: Places * Rob, Velike Lašče, a settlement in Slovenia * Roberts International Airport (IATA code ROB), in Monrovia, Liberia People * Rob (given name), a given name or nickname, e.g., for Robert(o), Robin/Robyn * Rob ( ...

, '' Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor'' * Shann Ray, ''American Masculine'' * Alice Rearden, translator;

Ann Fienup-Riordan Ann Fienup-Riordan (born 1948) is an American cultural anthropologist known for her work with the Yup'ik of western Alaska, particularly on Nelson Island and the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska. She received her Ph.D. i ...

, ed., ''Qaluyaarmiuni Nunamtenek Qanemciput: Our Nelson Island Stories'' * Touré, ''Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now'' * Amy Waldman, ''The Submission'' * Mary Winegarden, ''The Translator's Sister'' * Kevin Young, ''Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels'' *

, Lifetime Achievement ; 2013"The Before Columbus Foundation announces the ... "
Before Columbus Foundation. Press release September 19, 2013. Retrieved October 16, 2013. * Will Alexander, ''Singing In Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose, Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture'', Essay Press *

Jacob M. Appel Jacob M. Appel (born February 21, 1973) is an American author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic.Nagamatsu, Sequoia "A Few Words with the Ubiquitous Jacob M. Appel" ''Prince Mincer'' Journal http://primemincer.com/ confirmed ...

, ''The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up'', Cargo * Philip P. Choy, ''San Francisco Chinatown: A Guide To Its History & Architecture'', City Lights *

Amanda Coplin Amanda Coplin is an American novelist. She was born in Wenatchee, Washington and went on to study at and graduate from the University of Oregon and University of Minnesota. In 2013 Coplin won a Whiting Writer's Award and was named to the Nationa ...

, '' The Orchardist'', Harper Collins * Natalie Diaz, ''When My Brother Was An Aztec'', Copper Canyon Press *

, '' The Round House'', Harper Collins * Alan Gilbert (American academic), ''Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence'', University of Chicago *

, ''A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet'', Aunt Lute Books *

, ''Crazy Brave: A Memoir'', W.W. Norton & Co. * Demetria Martinez, ''The Block Captain's Daughter'', University of Oklahoma Press *

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore (July 30, 1940, Oakland, California – April 18, 2016, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was a U.S. poet, essayist and librettist. In 1970 he converted to the Sufi tradition of Islam and changed his name to Abdal-Hayy (eventual ...

, ''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 Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. Biography Marcus wa ...

, Lifetime Achievement * Floyd Salas, Lifetime Achievement ; 2014 *

Andrew Bacevich Andrew J. Bacevich Jr. (, ; born July 5, 1947) is an American historian specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is a Professor Emeritus of International ...

, ''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 Jamaica Kincaid (; born May 25, 1949) is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in North Bennington, Vermo ...

, ''See Now Then'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux * Tanya Olson, ''Boyishly'', YesYes Books * Sterling D. Plumpp, ''Home/Bass'', Third World Press *

Emily Raboteau Emily Raboteau is an American fiction writer, essayist, and Professor of Creative Writing at the City College of New York. Early life Raboteau grew up in New Jersey, the daughter of Princeton professor Albert Raboteau. She received an undergradu ...

, ''Searching For Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora'', Atlantic Monthly Press *

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 Armond White (born ) is an American film and music critic who writes for ''National Review'' and '' Out''. He was previously the editor of '' CityArts'' (2011–2014), the lead film critic for the alternative weekly ''New York Press'' (1997–20 ...

, Anti-Censorship Award * Michael Parenti, Lifetime Achievement ; 2015 * Hisham Aidi, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture (Vintage) * Arlene Biala, her beckoning hands (Word Poetry) *

Arthur Dong Arthur Dong is an American filmmaker and author whose work centers on Asia America and anti-gay prejudice. He was raised in San Francisco, California, graduating from Galileo High School in June 1971. He received his BA in film from San Franci ...

, Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American Nightclubs, 1936-1970 (DeepFocus Productions) *

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (born September 10, 1938) is an American historian, writer, and activist, known for her 2014 book ''An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States''. Early life and education Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1938 to ...

, 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 ''A Brief History of Seven Killings'' is the third novel by Jamaican author Marlon James. It was published in 2014 by Riverhead Books. The novel spans several decades and explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in Jamaica in 1976 and ...

(Riverhead Books) *

Naomi Klein Naomi A. Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism, organized labour, left-wing politics and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism, ecofascism ...

, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (Simon & Schuster) *

Laila Lalami Laila Lalami ( ar, ليلى العلمي, born 1968) is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her ''Licence de lettres'' degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she e ...

, The Moor's Account (Pantheon) * Manuel Luis Martinez, Los Duros (Floricanto Press) *

Craig Santos Perez Craig Santos Perez (born February 6, 1980) is a poet, essayist, university professor, American publisher (USA) from the Chamorro people, born in Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Guam Island. His poetry has received multiple awards, including a 2015 Americ ...

, from unincorporated territory uma’(Omnidawn) *

Carlos Santana Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán (; born July 20, 1947) is an American guitarist who rose to fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band Santana, which pioneered a fusion of Rock and roll and Latin American jazz. Its sound feature ...

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 Astra Taylor (born September 30, 1979) is a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker, writer, activist, and musician. She is a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation for her work on challenging predatory practices around debt. Life Born in Winni ...

, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Henry Holt) *

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activ ...

, Lifetime Achievement 2016 * 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 Loving Day is an annual national celebration held on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision '' Loving v. Virginia'' which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states. In the United ...

'' (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 Ned Sublette (born 1951 in Lubbock, Texas) is an American composer, musician, record producer, musicologist, historian, and author. Sublette studied Spanish Classical Guitar with Hector Garcia at the University of New Mexico and with Emilio P ...

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 *

Rabia Chaudry Rabia Chaudry ( Urdu: رابعہ چودھری) is a Pakistani-American attorney, author and podcast host. Family friend of Adnan Syed, subject of the podcast ''Serial'' (2014), Chaudry subsequently wrote a book about his case called ''Adnan’s ...

''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 Yaa Gyasi (born 1989) is a Ghanaian-American novelist. Her debut novel ''Homegoing'', published in 2016, won her, at the age of 26, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for a fir ...

''Homegoing'' (Knopf) * Holly Hughes ''Passings'' (Expedition Press) *

Randa Jarrar Randa Jarrar (born 1978) is an American writer and translator. Her first novel, the coming-of-age story ''A Map of Home'' (2008), won her the Hopwood Award, and an Arab American Book Award. Since then she has published short stories, essays, the ...

''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 Patrick Phillips is an American poet, writer, and professor. He teaches writing and literature at Stanford University, and is a Carnegie Foundation Fellow and a fellow of the Cullman Center for Writers at the New York Public Library. He has been ...

''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 Nancy Mercado Ph.D. (Born December 1959) is an American writer, editor, educator and activist; her work focuses on issues of injustice, the environment, and the Puerto Rican and Latino experience in the United States. She forms part of the Nu ...

''Lifetime Achievement'' *

Ammiel Alcalay Ammiel Alcalay (born 1956) is an American poet, scholar, critic, translator, and prose stylist. Born and raised in Boston, he is a first-generation American, son of Sephardic Jews from Serbia. His work often examines how poetry and politics affe ...

''Editor/Publisher Award'': Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative 2018 * Thi Bui ''The Best That We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir'' (

Harry N. Abrams Abrams, formerly Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (HNA), is an American publisher of art and illustrated books, children's books, and stationery. The enterprise is a subsidiary of the French publisher La Martinière Groupe. Run by President and CEO Michae ...

) * 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 Temple University Press is a university press founded in 1969 that is part of Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). It is one of thirteen publishers to participate in the Knowledge Unlatched pilot, a global library consortium approach ...

) * Tongo Eisen-Martin ''Heaven Is All Goodbyes'' (

City Lights ''City Lights'' is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and ...

) * Dana Naone Hall ''Life of the Land: Articulations of a Native Writer'' (

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

) * Kelly Lytle Hernández ''City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965'' (

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC S ...

) *

''The Changeling: A Novel'' (

Spiegel & Grau Spiegel & Grau was originally a publishing imprint of Penguin Random House founded by Celina Spiegel and Julie Grau in 2005. On January 25, 2019, Penguin Random House announced that the imprint was being shut down and the two founders were lea ...

) * Bojan Louis ''Currents'' ( BkMk Press) *

Valeria Luiselli Valeria Luiselli (born August 16, 1983) is a Mexican author living in the United States. She is the author of the book of essays ''Sidewalks'' and the novel '' Faces in the Crowd'', which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First F ...

''Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions'' (

Coffee House Press Coffee House Press is a nonprofit independent press based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The press’s goal is to "produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience ...

) * Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B. V. Olguín ''Altermundos Latin@ Speculative Literature, Film, and Popular Culture'' ( UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press) *

Tiya Miles Tiya Alicia Miles is an American historian. She is a professor of history at Harvard University and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a public historian, academic historian, and creative writer who ...

''The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits'' (

The New Press The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André Schiffrin Tommy Pico Tommy Pico (born December 13, 1983) is an indigenous ( Kumeyaay Nation) writer, poet, and podcast host. Early life Pico grew up on the Viejas Reservation of the Viejas Group of Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians, a Kumeyaay tribe near S ...

''Nature Poem'' (

Tin House Books ''Tin House'' is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Portland publisher Win McCormack originally conceived the idea for a literary magazine called ''Tin House'' in the summer of 1998. He enlisted Holly MacArt ...

) * Rena Priest ''Patriarchy Blues'' (MoonPath Press) * Joseph Rios ''Shadowboxing: poems & impersonations'' (Omnidawn) * Sunaura Taylor ''Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation'' (

The New Press The New Press is an independent non-profit public-interest book publisher established in 1992 by André SchiffrinSequoyah Guess Lifetime Achievement *

Kellie Jones Kellie Jones (born 1959) is an American art historian and curator. She is a Professor in Art History and Archaeology in African American Studies at Columbia University. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. Biography Jones is the daughter of ...

''South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s'' (

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 ...

): Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award * Charles F. Harris Editor/Publisher Award * Rob Rogers Anti-Censorship Award * Heroes Are Gang Leaders Oral Literature Award 2019 * Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, and Floyd Cheung ''John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy'' (

University of Washington Press The University of Washington Press is an American academic publishing house. The organization is a division of the University of Washington, based in Seattle. Although the division functions autonomously, they have worked to assist the universi ...

) * May-lee Chai ''Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories'' (Blair) *

Louise DeSalvo Louise A. DeSalvo (September 27, 1942 – October 31, 2018) was an American writer, editor, professor, and lecturer who lived in New Jersey. Much of her work focused on Italian-American culture, though she was also a renowned Virginia Woolf schola ...

''The House of Early Sorrows: A Memoir in Essays'' (

Fordham University Press The Fordham University Press is a publishing house, a division of Fordham University, that publishes primarily in the humanities and the social sciences. Fordham University Press was established in 1907 and is headquartered at the university's ...

) * Heid E. Erdrich ''New Poets of Native Nations'' (

Graywolf Press Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Graywolf Press collaborates with organizations such as the College of Saint Benedict, the Mello ...

) * Ángel García ''Teeth Never Sleep: Poems'' (

University of Arkansas Press The University of Arkansas Press is a university press that is part of the University of Arkansas and has been a member of the Association of University Presses since 1984. Its mission is to publish peer-reviewed books and academic journals. It ...

) *

Tommy Orange Tommy may refer to: People * Tommy (given name) * Tommy Atkins, or just Tommy, a slang term for a common soldier in the British Army Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Tommy'' (1931 film), a Soviet drama film * ''Tommy'' (1975 fi ...

There There "There There" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead. It was released as the lead single from their sixth album, ''Hail to the Thief'' (2003), on 26 May 2003. It reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, number one in Canada and Portug ...

'' ( Knopf) * Halifu Osumare ''Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir'' (

University Press of Florida The University Press of Florida (UPF) is the scholarly publishing arm of the State University System of Florida, representing Florida's twelve state universities. It is located in Gainesville near the University of Florida, one of the state's majo ...

) * Christopher Patton ''Unlikeness Is Us: Fourteen from the Exeter Book'' ( Gaspereau Press) *

Mark Sarvas Mark Sarvas (born September 26, 1964) is an American novelist, critic, and blogger living in Los Angeles. He is the host of the literary blog The Elegant Variation and author of the novel ''Harry, Revised'' (Bloomsbury, Spring 2008). ''Harry, Re ...

''Memento Park: A Novel'' (

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...

) *

Jeffrey C. Stewart Jeffrey Conrad Stewart (born 1950 in Chicago) is an American Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He won the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for his book ''The ...

'' The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke'' (

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

) *

William T. Vollmann William Tanner Vollmann (born July 28, 1959) is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction with the novel ''Europe Central''.

''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 Marvel Comics is an American comic book publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Comics'' in ...

) *

Nathan Hare Nathan Hare (born April 9, 1933) is an American sociologist, activist, academic, and psychologist. In 1968 he was the first person hired to coordinate a Black studies program in the United States. He established the program at San Francisco St ...

Lifetime Achievement Award *

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) was founded in 1969 to foster multidisciplinary research efforts at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It is one of four ethnic studies centers established at UCLA that year, all of whic ...

Editor/Publisher Award *

Moor Mother Camae Ayewa, better known by her stage name Moor Mother, is an American poet, musician, and activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is one half of the collective Black Quantum Futurism, along with Rasheedah Phillips, and co-leads the g ...

Oral Literature Award

2020 to present

2020 * Reginald Dwayne Betts, ''Felon: Poems'' (W.W. Norton) * Sara Borjas, ''Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff'' (Noemi Press) *

Neeli Cherkovski Neeli Cherkovski (born Nelson Cherry; July 1, 1945) is an American poet and memoirist, who has resided since 1975 in San Francisco. Biography Born in Santa Monica, California, Cherkovski grew up in San Bernardino, California. In the 1970s he wa ...

, 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 George Takei (; ja, ジョージ・タケイ; born Hosato Takei (武井穂郷), April 20, 1937) is an American actor, author and activist known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the fictional starship USS ''Enterprise'' in the televi ...

, 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) * Lifetime Achievement: Eleanor W. Traylor * Editor Award: ''The Panopticon Review'', Kofi Natambu, editor * Publisher Award: Commune Editions, Jasper Bernes, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr, editors * Oral Literature Award: Amalia Leticia Ortiz * Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: ''Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy'', edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll 2021 * 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, '': 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) * Lifetime Achievement: Maryemma Graham * Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: ''Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson'', by Shana Redmond * Anti-Censorship Award: ''Separated: Inside an American Tragedy'', by Jacob Soboroff 2022 * 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, editors, ''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 (poet), 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) * Lifetime Achievement: Gayl Jones * Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: ''Sound Recording Technology and American Literature'', by Jessica E. Teague * Anti-Censorship Award: Jeffrey St. Clair * Editor/Publisher Award: Wave Books: Charlie Wright (Publisher) / Joshua Beckman (Editor in Chief)

References

{{reflist , refs= "The Before Columbus Foundation announces the American Book Awards"
(Index to lists of winners through 2006). Alaska Native Knowledge Network (ankn.uaf.edu). Retrieved July 7, 2012. American Book Awards, American literary awards Awards established in 1978 1978 establishments in the United States