Upcoming Events
Discover their stories.
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2021 Fiction
Deacon King Kong
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2021 Nonfiction
Tacky’s Revolt
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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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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 Fiction
There There
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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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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 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 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
Hard Love Province
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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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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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2014 Lifetime Achievement
Wilson Harris
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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 Lifetime Achievement
Arnold Rampersad
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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
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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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2011 Lifetime Achievement
John Edgar Wideman
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2011 Nonfiction
The Warmth of Other Suns
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
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Meet Natasha Trethewey, 2021 Winner for Nonfiction
November 29, 2021
Born in Mississippi on Confederate Memorial Day in 1966, Natasha Trethewey’s existence was the result of an interracial marriage, still…
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Meet Victoria Chang, 2021 Winner for Poetry
November 22, 2021
In “Obit,” poet Victoria Chang prefers the stark, objective language of the journalistic obituary form to the elegy, overflowing with…
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Meet Vincent Brown, 2021 Winner for Nonfiction
November 15, 2021
We’re all too familiar with the recitation of Black history—both in the US and globally—as an unrelenting catalog of sorrow…
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Author Deesha Philyaw On “Church Ladies” Success, Building Community and Her Plans for HBO
November 9, 2021
Pittsburgh fiction writer Deesha Philyaw dedicated her award-winning short story collection to her daughters “and for everyone trying to get…
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Natasha Trethewey to speak at Ursuline College
October 27, 2021
Join the Ursuline College community for an afternoon conversation with former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award…
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
@AnisfieldWolfRevisit our 2021 #AWBAdocumentary with this profile on @NTrethewey, 2021 winner for nonfiction with “Memorial Drive.”
Watch the full video: https://t.co/JAG5Q0JTGo https://t.co/hmLqyZr4Gn
The D.C. Council unanimously voted to rename an elementary school in Petworth after U.S. Rep. John Lewis, signing off on a proposal from Mayor Muriel Bowser to honor the trailblazing civil rights leader and Congressman who died last year. https://t.co/F3wPmJhIkQ https://t.co/FwvA8MFS87
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, @MarlonJames5 won our prize in 2015 for “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” a novel that hinges on an assassination attempt on Bob Marley in December 1976. He turns 51 today. https://t.co/Kv21rBtylR
Revisit our 2021 #AWBAdocumentary with this profile on @VChangPoet, 2021 winner for poetry with “Obit.”
Watch the full video: https://t.co/T7cHlr0xx5 https://t.co/TWsaRTY4L8
Revisit our 2021 #AWBAdocumentary with this profile on #VincentBrown, 2021 winner for nonfiction with “Tacky’s Revolt.” Watch the full video: https://t.co/qGTTMUG9os https://t.co/sr3JQyynUZ
Hey! Congrats @mdbell79! And great to see Ohio natives Anthony Doerr, Rita Dove, Brian Broome and @NifMuhammad on this list!
https://t.co/W7F5VAK5PN
