Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Announce 2025 Winners

Now in its 90th year, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have announced its latest class of winning publications — all of which are centered around race and diversity, and all of which were published last year. The Cleveland-based awards are administered by the Cleveland Foundation.

"For 90 years, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have championed fearless, groundbreaking literature that challenges the status quo, ignites dialogue, and shapes a more just and inclusive world," said Lillian Kuri, the Cleveland Foundation’s president and CEO, in a news release. "This year’s winners unearth buried histories, redefine cultural narratives, and demand our attention — at a moment when these voices are more vital than ever." 

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In the fiction category, author Danzy Senna wins for her novel Colored Television, which follows the story of a biracial novelist who shifts into writing for television.

Artist and author Tessa Hulls wins in the memoir category for her graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts — a detailed examination of trauma that spanned three generations of her family. Notably, it’s the first graphic memoir to win an AWBA.

Janice Harrington, a Chicago-based poet and children’s book author, wins for her collection Yard Show. The poems use images of people’s objects in their yards to tell Black stories and to symbolize community.

Together, writer John Swanson Jacobs and editor Jonathan D. S. Schroeder earn the nonfiction award for the book The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery; A Rediscovered Narrative, with a Full Biography. The first-person narrative was written by Jacobs, who was born into slavery in 1855 and who later spoke out and critiqued American politics. In the book, his historical narrative is followed up with a biography of Jacobs’s life and family by Schroeder.

AWBA awards Yusef Komunyakaa with its lifetime achievement award, which honors the esteemed poet who has released more than a dozen collections that explore his experiences fighting in the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement.

The winners were selected by a jury chaired by poet Natasha Trethewey.

“This year’s winners add new dimensions to the Anisfield-Wolf legacy,” Trethewey said in a news release. “From a rediscovered first-person slave narrative to a searing portrait of modern racial identity, these books demand to be read and discussed.” 

Winners will be honored in a ceremony on Sept. 19 in Cleveland. Read more at anisfield-wolf.org.

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