Discover their stories.
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2025 Fiction
Colored Television
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2025 Nonfiction
The United States Governed By Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery
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2025 Memoir
Feeding Ghosts
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2025 Poetry
Yard Show
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2025 Lifetime Achievement
Yusef Komunyakaa
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2024 Nonfiction
The Rediscovery of America
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2024 Lifetime Achievement
Maxine Hong Kingston
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2024 Poetry
From From
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2024 Fiction
Tremor
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2023 Fiction
Horse
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2023 Fiction
The Family Chao
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2023 Poetry
Alive at the End of the World
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2023 Nonfiction
Half American
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2023 Lifetime Achievement
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
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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 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 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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2017 Fiction
The Fortunes
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2017 Poetry
Olio
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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 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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2015 Poetry
The New Testament
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2015 Lifetime Achievement
David Brion Davis
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 88 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
Watch the 89th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Ceremony
Recent News
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2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winners Announced, Celebrating 90 Years of Literary Excellence
April 10, 2025
CLEVELAND — Four groundbreaking works have been named winners of the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, the nation’s only endowed juried…
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Cleveland Foundation Celebrates 90 Years of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards with 2025 Finalists
March 10, 2025
CLEVELAND – The Cleveland Foundation announced 10 finalists for the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (AWBA), marking 90 years of honoring…
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Cleveland Book Week Kicks Off, Anchored by Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Author Symposium on Sept. 28
September 17, 2024
CLEVELAND – Cleveland Book Week is underway, with a full schedule of far-ranging programs that are nearly all free to…
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Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Announce Updates for 2025 Award Year
September 11, 2024
Book prize welcomes new jurors and new category; sets October 16 deadline for submissions Cleveland, OH – The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards…
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Introducing the Class of 2024
March 26, 2024
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, presented by the Cleveland Foundation, today announced the winners of the 89th annual awards. The 2024…
Educational Resources
View all resources-
Teaching Gods of the Upper Air
Level: Young Adult
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Hidden Figures – Women of the Civil Rights Movement
Book: Hidden Figures
Level: Young Adult -
Reading Ohio’s Black Newspapers in the Nineteenth Century
Level: Young Adult
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Redacting and Reclaiming: Teaching Donika Kelly’s “The Renunciations”
Book: The Renunciations
Level: Young Adult
