Discover their stories.
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2020 Lifetime Achievement
Eric Foner
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2020 Poetry
Deaf Republic
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2020 Fiction
The Old Drift
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2020 Nonfiction
Gods of the Upper Air
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2019 Poetry
Wade in the Water
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2019 Lifetime Achievement
Sonia Sanchez
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2019 Nonfiction
The War Before the War
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2019 Fiction
There There
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2018 Nonfiction
Bunk
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2018 Fiction
Sing, Unburied, Sing
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2018 Poetry
In the Language of My Captor
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2018 Lifetime Achievement
N. Scott Momaday
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2017 Fiction
The Association of Small Bombs
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2017 Nonfiction
Hidden Figures
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2017 Fiction
The Fortunes
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2017 Poetry
Olio
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2017 Lifetime Achievement
Isabel Allende
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2016 Lifetime Achievement
Orlando Patterson
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2016 Nonfiction
The Gay Revolution
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2016 Poetry
Heaven
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2016 Nonfiction
What the Eye Hears
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2016 Fiction
The Jazz Palace
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2015 Poetry
The New Testament
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2015 Lifetime Achievement
David Brion Davis
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2015 Nonfiction
A Tale of Two Plantations
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2015 Fiction
A Brief History of Seven Killings
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2015 Poetry
Hard Love Province
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2014 Lifetime Achievement
Wilson Harris
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2014 Lifetime Achievement
George Lamming
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2014 Fiction
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
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2014 Fiction
The Big Smoke
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2014 Nonfiction
My Promised Land
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2013 Lifetime Achievement
Wole Soyinka
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2013 Nonfiction
Far From the Tree
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2013 Fiction
My Favorite Warlord
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2013 Fiction
The Yellow Birds
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2013 Fiction
Kind One
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2012 Fiction
Half-Blood Blues
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2012 Nonfiction
Less Than Human
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2012 Nonfiction
American Oracle
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2012 Lifetime Achievement
Arnold Rampersad
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2011 Lifetime Achievement
John Edgar Wideman
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2011 Nonfiction
The Warmth of Other Suns
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2011 Nonfiction
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
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2011 Fiction
Great House
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2011 Fiction
The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
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2010 Lifetime Achievement
Elizabeth Alexander
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2010 Fiction
Burnt Shadows
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2010 Lifetime Achievement
William Julius Wilson
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2010 Lifetime Achievement
Oprah Winfrey
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2009 Fiction
The Plague of Doves
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2009 Nonfiction
The Hemingses of Monticello
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2009 Fiction
The Boat
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2009 Lifetime Achievement
Paule Marshall
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2008 Nonfiction
Infidel
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2008 Fiction
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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2008 Fiction
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
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2008 Lifetime Achievement
William Melvin Kelley
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2007 Fiction
Half of a Yellow Sun
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2007 Lifetime Achievement
Taylor Branch
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2007 Fiction
Blue Front
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2007 Nonfiction
Steel Drivin’ Man
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2006 Nonfiction
New York Burning
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2006 Fiction
On Beauty
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2006 Lifetime Achievement
William Demby
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2005 Fiction
The Dew Breaker
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2005 Nonfiction
M•A•C•N•O•L•I•A
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2005 Nonfiction
Unforgivable Blackness
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2005 Lifetime Achievement
August Wilson
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2004 Nonfiction
Generations of Captivity
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2004 Fiction
The Known World
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2004 Nonfiction
Random Family
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2004 Lifetime Achievement
Derek Walcott
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2003 Nonfiction
A Problem From Hell
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2003 Fiction
World Hotel
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2003 Fiction
The Emperor of Ocean Park
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2003 Lifetime Achievement
Adrienne Kennedy
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2002 Nonfiction
Quincy Jones
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2002 Nonfiction
Vernon Can Read
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2002 Fiction
John Henry Days
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2002 Lifetime Achievement
Jay Wright
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2001 Lifetime Achievement
Lucille Clifton
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2001 Nonfiction
W.E.B. Du Bois
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2001 Nonfiction
Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner
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2000 Nonfiction
Out of Place
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2000 Lifetime Achievement
Ernest J. Gaines
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2000 Fiction
A Gesture Life
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1999 Fiction
Cloudsplitter
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1999 Lifetime Achievement
John Hope Franklin
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1999 Nonfiction
Walking with the Wind
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1998 Lifetime Achievement
Gordon Parks
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1998 Fiction
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
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1998 Nonfiction
The Black Notebooks
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1997 Lifetime Achievement
Albert L. Murray
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1997 Fiction
The Autobiography of My Mother
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1997 Nonfiction
The Color of Water
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1996 Nonfiction
Amazing Grace
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1996 Lifetime Achievement
Dorothy West
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1996 Fiction
All Souls’ Rising
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1995 Fiction
Sweetbitter
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1995 Nonfiction
Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White
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1995 Nonfiction
The Science and Politics of Racial Research
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1994 Fiction
The Latin Deli
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1994 Nonfiction
W.E.B. Du Bois
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1994 Nonfiction
A Different Mirror
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1993 Nonfiction
In My Father’s House
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1993 Fiction
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
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1993 Nonfiction
The Civilization of the Goddess
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1992 Nonfiction
Lessons and Legacies
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1992 Nonfiction
The IQ Mythology
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1992 Nonfiction
The Homeplace
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1992 Landmark Achievement
Ralph Ellison
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1992 Nonfiction
Praying for Sheetrock
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1991 Nonfiction
African Ark
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1991 Nonfiction
Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience
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1991 Nonfiction
The Arrogance of Faith
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1990 Nonfiction
The Image of the Black in Western Art From the American Revolution to World War I
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1990 Fiction
The Women of Plums
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1989 Nonfiction
A Life in the Struggle
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1989 Nonfiction
Parting the Waters
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1989 Nonfiction
Dreamings
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1989 Nonfiction
The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
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1988 Fiction
Beloved
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1988 Nonfiction
Whose Votes Count?
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1988 Nonfiction
Living Maya
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1988 Fiction
A Sport of Nature
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1987 Nonfiction
The Life of Langston Hughes
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1987 Nonfiction
Spirit of Survival
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1986 Nonfiction
Freedom Rising
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1986 Nonfiction
Kachinas
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1986 Nonfiction
Nazis in Skokie
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1985 Nonfiction
The Abandonment of the Jews
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1985 Fiction
Mouroir
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1984 Nonfiction
Pre-Columbian Art
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1984 Nonfiction
From Immigrants to Ethnics
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1983 Nonfiction
Hunger of Memory
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1983 Nonfiction
Ake
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1982 Nonfiction
Evangelist of Race
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1982 Nonfiction
People of the Sacred Mountain
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1981 Nonfiction
Maasai
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1981 Nonfiction
Song From the Earth
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1980 Nonfiction
The Ecology of Human Development
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1980 Nonfiction
The !Kung San
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1979 Nonfiction
The Bushmen
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1978 Nonfiction
The Legacy of Malthus
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1978 Nonfiction
The Woman Warrior
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1977 Nonfiction
Years of Infamy
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1977 Nonfiction
Simple Justice
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1976 Nonfiction
The War Against the Jews
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1976 Nonfiction
The Arabs
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1976 Nonfiction
The Myth of the Jewish Race
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1975 Nonfiction
Roll, Jordan, Roll
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1975 Nonfiction
The Aryan Myth
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1974 Nonfiction
The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright
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1974 Nonfiction
Justice in South Africa
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1974 Nonfiction
The Dreyfus Case
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1974 Nonfiction
Doctor and the Aborigines
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1973 Nonfiction
The Water Is Wide
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1973 Nonfiction
Men & Brothers
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1973 Nonfiction
Behind Ghetto Walls
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1972 Nonfiction
The Healing of a Nation
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1972 Nonfiction
The Autobiography of an Unknown South African
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1972 Nonfiction
Slavery in the Structure of American Politics
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1972 Nonfiction
The Black Image in the White Mind
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1972 Nonfiction
Outcasts from Evolution
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1971 Nonfiction
A History of the African People
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1971 Nonfiction
Black Freedom
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1971 Nonfiction
La Raza
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1971 Nonfiction
The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca
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1970 Nonfiction
The Negro in Brazilian Society
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1970 Nonfiction
Scottsboro
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1970 Nonfiction
The Great Betrayal
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1970 Nonfiction
Custer Died for Your Sins
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1969 Nonfiction
Negro and White Children
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1969 Fiction
In the Mecca
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1969 Nonfiction
The Leo Frank Case
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1969 Nonfiction
The American Indian Today
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1968 Nonfiction
Warrant for Genocide
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1968 Nonfiction
Children of Crisis
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1968 Nonfiction
The Destruction of the European Jews
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1968 Nonfiction
The Jews Among the Nations
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1967 Nonfiction
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
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1967 Nonfiction
La Vida
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1966 Nonfiction
The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought
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1966 Nonfiction
Manchild in the Promised Land
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1966 Nonfiction
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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1966 Nonfiction
Your Heredity and Environment
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1965 Nonfiction
The Struggle for Equality
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1965 Nonfiction
A History of the Jews
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1965 Nonfiction
Mississippi
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1965 Nonfiction
Assimilation in American Life
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1964 Nonfiction
Beyond the Melting Pot
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1964 Nonfiction
The New World of Negro Americans
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1964 Nonfiction
Faith and Prejudice
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1963 Nonfiction
Mankind Evolving
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1962 Nonfiction
Black Like Me
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1962 Fiction
The Forbidden Man
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1962 Nonfiction
Antislavery
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1961 Nonfiction
To Sir, With Love
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1961 Nonfiction
The Reluctant African
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1960 Nonfiction
The Lost Cities of Africa
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1960 Nonfiction
I Speak for Myself
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1959 Nonfiction
Racial and Cultural Minorities
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1959 Nonfiction
Stride Toward Freedom
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1958 Nonfiction
White Mother
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1958 Nonfiction
Handbook on Race Relations
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1957 Nonfiction
The Masters and the Slaves
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1957 Nonfiction
Naught for Your Comfort
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1956 Nonfiction
A Manual of Intergroup Relations
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1956 Nonfiction
They Wait in Darkness
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1955 Nonfiction
Report on Africa
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1955 Nonfiction
Cultural Differences and Medical Care
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1954 Nonfiction
Struggle for Africa
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1954 Fiction
Simple Takes a Wife
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1953 Nonfiction
People of the Deer
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1953 Nonfiction
A Many-Splendored Thing
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1952 Nonfiction
Race Relations
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1952 Nonfiction
Venture to the Interior
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1951 Nonfiction
Twilight in South Africa
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1951 Fiction
The Wall
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1950 Nonfiction
Punishment Without Crime
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1950 Nonfiction
Your Most Humble Servant
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1949 Nonfiction
Anatomy of Paradise
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1949 Fiction
Cry, the Beloved Country
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1948 Nonfiction
The Indians of the Americas
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1948 Fiction
The Other Room
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1947 Fiction
East River
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1947 Nonfiction
Latin Americans in Texas
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1946 Nonfiction
Black Metropolis
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1946 Nonfiction
One Nation
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1945 Fiction
Earth and High Heaven
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1945 Nonfiction
An American Dilemma
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1944 Nonfiction
New World A-Coming
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1944 Nonfiction
The World of Sholom Aleichem
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1943 Nonfiction
Dust Tracks on a Road
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1942 Nonfiction
The Haitian People
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1942 Nonfiction
Quest
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1941 Nonfiction
From Many Lands
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1940 Nonfiction
The Negro Family in the United States
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1939 Nonfiction
Non-European Peoples of South Africa
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1939 Nonfiction
The Negro College Graduate
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1937 Nonfiction
We Europeans
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1936 Nonfiction
Negro Politicians
Our Mission
The only juried American book prize focusing on works that address racism and diversity.
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity. For 85 years, the distinguished books earning Anisfield-Wolf prizes have opened and challenged our minds. Cleveland poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf established the book awards in 1935, in honor of her father, John Anisfield, and husband, Eugene Wolf, to reflect her family’s passion for social justice.
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Welcome to the Asterisk* (a podcast by the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards)
Podcast episodes
View allRecent news
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[In Their Words] Examining The Runaway Success Of A Brief History Of Seven Killings
December 14, 2015
by Dr. Anand Bhat In 2007, when I asked my driver in Caracas if evangelical Christianity had been making its…
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5 Things You Don’t Know About The Anisfield-Wolf Ceremony
August 20, 2012
Each year we recognize several authors for their contributions to the ongoing conversation about race and diversity in the world….
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An Overlooked Classic, “Nervous Conditions” Is A Book That Deserves A Second Life In The Mainstream
May 27, 2016
by Gail Arnoff “I was not sorry when my brother died.” So begins Tsi Tsi Dangarembga’s semi-autobiographical novel Nervous Conditions,…
Educational Resources
View all resources-
Discovering “Reading-in-Place” — the Act of Joining Stories and Geography
Level: Young Adult
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Exploring Magical Thinking Within “Olio” and “The Second Founding”
Book: Olio
Level: Young Adult -
Taking A Deep Dive Into “Sing Unburied Sing”
Book: Sing, Unburied, Sing
Level: Young Adult -
Discussing The Complexities Of Citizenship Within “Half Of A Yellow Sun”
Book: Half of a Yellow Sun
Level: Young Adult
Support the Cleveland community by purchasing your Anisfield-Wolf books at these local sellers
Appletree Books, an independent bookstore established in Cleveland Heights, offers an eclectic, well-curated selection of new book titles in multiple genres for both children and adults.
Loganberry Books is an independently owned and operated bookstore in the historic Larchmere neighborhood, featuring a carefully curated collection of new, used and rare books.
Mac’s Backs is an independent bookstore located in the Coventry neighborhood, and home to three floors of new and used classics, mysteries, science fiction, contemporary fiction and non-fiction books and magazines.
Visible Voice is a bookstore with that lost independent feel in the Tremont neighborhood—a relaxed, inviting environment conducive to discovery, where the books marginalized by commercial concerns have a home.
