Discover their stories.
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2022 Poetry
The Renunciations
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2022 Lifetime Achievement
Ishmael Reed
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2022 Nonfiction
Of Fear and Strangers
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2022 Fiction
The Trees
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2022 Nonfiction
All That She Carried
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2021 Lifetime Achievement
Samuel R. Delany
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2021 Poetry
Obit
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2021 Nonfiction
Memorial Drive
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2021 Fiction
Deacon King Kong
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2021 Nonfiction
Tacky’s Revolt
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2020 Poetry
Deaf Republic
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2020 Nonfiction
Gods of the Upper Air
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2020 Fiction
The Old Drift
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2020 Lifetime Achievement
Eric Foner
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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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2019 Poetry
Wade in the Water
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2018 Lifetime Achievement
N. Scott Momaday
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2018 Poetry
In the Language of My Captor
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2018 Fiction
Sing, Unburied, Sing
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2018 Nonfiction
Bunk
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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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2017 Fiction
The Association of Small Bombs
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2017 Nonfiction
Hidden Figures
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2016 Nonfiction
The Gay Revolution
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2016 Fiction
The Jazz Palace
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2016 Nonfiction
What the Eye Hears
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2016 Poetry
Heaven
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2016 Lifetime Achievement
Orlando Patterson
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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 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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2014 Lifetime Achievement
Wilson Harris
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2014 Lifetime Achievement
George Lamming
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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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2013 Lifetime Achievement
Wole Soyinka
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2012 Fiction
Half-Blood Blues
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2012 Nonfiction
American Oracle
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2012 Nonfiction
Less Than Human
Highlights from the 2022 Awards Ceremony
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 86 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.
Proudly presented by the Cleveland Foundation
Recent News
View all news-
7 Titles From AW-Winning Authors You’ll Want On Your TBR List
January 24, 2023
Looking for some new titles to pick up? Check out some recent releases from Anisfield-Wolf award winners – you already…
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Watch the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Awards Documentary
November 7, 2022
For the third year, our literary celebrations continue with a one-hour awards documentary featuring our 2022 winners: Percival Everett (fiction), Donika Kelly (poetry), George Makari (nonfiction), Tiya…
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7th Annual Cleveland Book Week, Cover to Cover
October 6, 2022
Book lovers gathered in person for the first time since 2019 to celebrate Cleveland Book Week this fall, with a…
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Anisfield-Wolf Fellow Valentino Zullo is Shaping the Future through Comics
August 31, 2022
“Fantasy drives us all,” declares Professor Valentino L. Zullo, the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Post-Doctoral Fellow in English and Public Humanities at…
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7th Annual Cleveland Book Week Kicks Off September 9
August 3, 2022
Since 2016, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have hosted Cleveland Book Week, to celebrate its past and present winners and showcase…
Educational Resources
View all resources-
The Music of Tommy Orange’s There There
Book: There There
Level: Child -
Teaching Kevin Young’s Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News
Book: Bunk
Level: Young Adult -
Teaching Diversity in the Eras of Plague and Pandemic
Book: Far From the Tree
Level: Young Adult -
Reading Anisfield-Wolf Winners’ Picture Books
Level: Child
Join the conversation on Twitter
@AnisfieldWolf#AWBAxBHM || Jesmyn Ward, 45, writes to tell the truth or, “so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, our lives as fraught and lovely and important as theirs.” She won the AW prize in 2018 for “Sing Unburied Sing.” https://t.co/W0C8aZznNJ
#AWBAxBHM || A. Van Jordan (’05) won the Anisfield-Wolf prize for M*A*C*N*O*L*I*A, telling the story of MacNolia Cox, a 13yo Black girl who was the first to advance to the final round of the national Spelling Bee. Hear more from Jordan on #TheAsterisk: https://t.co/MwcFyrK2gs https://t.co/uVYh7kHbcd
In King’s words, it was “the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.”
Did you know #MLK is an @AnisfieldWolf Book Awards winner? Martin Luther King Jr’s first book, his memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott, was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf prize for nonfiction in 1959. #AWBAxBHM https://t.co/8GILwcOa7A
This beautiful tote was handmade in #Cleveland by @clevelandsews for our @NEHgov @NEH_Education summer institute: Reading, Writing, and Teaching the Rust Belt. Which @beltpub @AnisfieldWolf books should we fill them with? Apply by 3/3 at https://t.co/aA2GcZ1Iky #rustbeltlab https://t.co/ZPEDaTu8tR
