Hurston-Wright Legacy Award

Awards Categories

Legacy Award

North Star Award

Ella Baker Award

Madam C.J. Walker Award

Award for College Writers

2018 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• The Talented Ribkins by Ladee Hubbard

• What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
• An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

  Fiction

• Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou

• The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

• What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
• The Tragedy of Brady Sims by Ernest J. Gaines
• Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani

  Nonfiction

• The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits by Tiya Miles

• Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education by Noliwe Rooks
• ' by Michael W. Twitty

• Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. by Danielle Allen
• Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy by Sheryll Cashin
• Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History'' by Camille T. Dungy

  Poetry

• Semiautomatic by Evie Shockley

• Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealey
• Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith

• City of Bones by Kwame Dawes
• Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy
• In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

  2017 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Damnificados by JJ Amaworo Wilson

• Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
• Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John

  Fiction

• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

• The Loss of All Lost Things by Amina Gautier
• Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

• The Mother by Yvvette Edwards
• The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
• Swing Time by Zadie Smith

  Nonfiction

• Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross

• The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, And Reconciliation After the Genome by Alondra Nelson
• In The Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe

• The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott
• by Ibram X. Kendi
• Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge

  Poetry

• Bestiary by Donika Kelly

• play dead by francine j. harris
• Thief in the Interior by Phillip B. Williams

• Third Voice by Ruth Ellen Kocher
• Rapture by Sjohnna McCray
• The Crown Ain't Worth Much by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

  2016 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Mourner's Bench by Sanderia Faye

• The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson
• The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

  Fiction

• Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

• The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
• The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
• Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

  Nonfiction

• Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk

• The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
• Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic by Gerald Horne

• Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture by Ron Stodghill
• Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of How We “Catch” Mental Illness by Harriet A. Washington
• The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America by D. Watkins

  Poetry

• Forest Primeval by Vievee Francis

• Honest Engine by Kyle Dargan
• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

• How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes
• It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time by Angela Jackson
• Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis

  2015 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami

• An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
• Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique

• The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani
• Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah
• The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed

  Nonfiction

• Not For Everyday Use by Elizabeth Nunez

• Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow
• This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.

• Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen
• Malcolm X at Oxford Union by Saladin Ambar
• Losing Our Way by Bob Herbert

  Poetry

• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

• Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis
• King Me by Roger Reeves

• We Don't Know Any Gangsters by Brian Gilmore
• Digest by Gregory Pardlo
• The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon by Willie Perdomo

  2014 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

• See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid
• The Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson

• Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen
• The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
• The Gospel According to Cane by Courttia Newland

  Nonfiction

• Ebony & Ivory by Craig Wilder

• Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch
• Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

• Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home by Sheri Booker
• The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights by William P. Jones
• Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau

  Poetry

• Darktown Follies by Amaud Jamaul Johnson

• Hemming the Water by Yona Harvey
• The Cineaste: Poems by A. Van Jordan

• Silverchest by Carl Phillips
• The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka
• What We Ask of Flesh by Remica L. Bingham

  2013 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

• Elsewhere, California by Dana Johnson
• Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden
• The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
• The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
• A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvette Edwards

  Nonfiction

• The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and Rise and Decline of Black Politics by Fredrick Harris

• American Lynching by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
• Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
• Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City by Natalie Hopkinson
• Help Me To Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery by Heather Andrea Williams
• There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe

  Poetry

• The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 by Lucille Clifton

• But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
• me and Nina by Monica Hand

  2012 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

• Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
• Zone One by Colson Whitehead

• Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• You Are Free by Danzy Senna

  Nonfiction

• Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement by Tomiko Brown-Nagin

• Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
• One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

• My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir by Mark Whitaker
• Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry

  Poetry

• the new black by Evie Shockley

• Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay
• Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

  2011 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans

• Glorious by Bernice L. McFadden
• Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

• How to Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories by Tiphanie Yanique
• How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
• Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans by Rosalyn Story

  Nonfiction

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

• Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation by Rawn James Jr.
• The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 by Lawrence Jackson

• Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
• John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
• Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams

  Poetry

• Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 by Elizabeth Alexander

• Lighthead by Terrance Hayes
• Skin, Inc: Identity Repair Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis

  2010 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel by Percival Everett

• Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

• Big Machine by Victor Lavalle
• Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
• The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zona Eze

  Nonfiction

• Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin Kelley

• Freedom by Any Means: True Stories of Cunning and Courage on the Underground Railroad by Betty DeRamus
• Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by Wil Haygood

• More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City by William Julius Wilson
• Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial by James A. Miller
• The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama by Gwen Ifill

  Poetry

• Sonata Mulattica: Poems by Rita Dove
• Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems by Haki R. Madhubuti

• Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem by Mitchell L.H Douglas
• Gospel by Samiya Bashir

  2009 Winners and Finalists

Fiction

• Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

• Holding Pattern: Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen
• Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward

• Blood Colony by Tananarive Due
• Song Yet Sung by James McBride
• Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke

  Nonfiction

• Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid by Frank B. Wilderson

• Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings
• The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth- Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
• Somebody Scream: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power by Marcus Reeves
• The Agitator’s Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African- American Family by Sheryll Cashin

  Poetry

• The Headless Saints by Myronn Hardy
• Please by Jericho Brown
• Warhorses by Yusef Komunyakaa

  2008 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• She's Gone by Kwame Dawes

• Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard
• Them by Nathan McCall

  Fiction

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

• Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
• The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse Condé

• Measuring Time: A Novel by Helon Habila
• The Guyanese Wander by Jan Carew
• The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi

  Nonfiction

• Brother, I'm Dying by Edwige Danticat

• Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America by Sylviane A. Diouf
• On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century by Sherrilyn Ifill

• Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil and the African Slave Trade by Gerald Horne
• The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why by Jabari Asim

  Poetry

• Bouquet of Hungers by Kyle G. Dargan

• Conversion by Remica L. Bingham
• Quantum Lyrics by A. Van Jordan

  2007 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

• Get Down: Stories by Asali Solomon
• Unburnable by Marie-Elena John

  Fiction

• All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

• Dominion: A Novel by Calvin Baker
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin
• Nowhere is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden
• Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa’Thiong’o

  Nonfiction

• Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai

• The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora by Louis Chude-Sokei
• The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging by Kym Ragusa

• Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley by Christopher John Farley
• BookMarks: Reading in Black and White by Karla F.C. Holloway
• The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America by Walter C. Rucker

  Poetry

• Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith
• The Architecture of Language by Quincy Troupe
• Wind in a Box by Terrance Hayes

  2006 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas

• Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana
• Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon

  Fiction

• My Jim: A Novel by Nancy Rawles

• Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham
• The Untelling by Tayari Jones

• Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips
• Joplin’s Ghost by Tananarive Due
• Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate

  Nonfiction

• Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin by John Hope Franklin

• Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle
• Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists by Lisa E. Farrington

• My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations by Mary Frances Berry
• Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality by Dwight A. McBride
• Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition by Cheryl A. Wall

  Contemporary Fiction

• The Long Mile: The Shango Mysteries by Clyde W. Ford

• Love on the Dotted Line by David E. Talbert
• Who Does She Think She is? by Benilde Little

  2005 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• GraceLand by Chris Abani

• The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips
• The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan

  Fiction

• Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? by Maryse Condé

• The Dew Breaker by Edwige Danticat
• The Madonna of Excelsior by Zakes Mda

• American Desert by Percival Everett
• Links by Nuruddin Farah
• The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

  Nonfiction

• Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis DeVeaux

• A Continent for the Taking by Howard French
• The End of Blackness by Debra J. Dickerson

• Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge by Ellis Cose
• The Black Interior by Elizabeth Alexander
• The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream by Sheryll Cashin

  Contemporary Fiction

• A Woman's Worth by Tracy Price-Thompson
• Bling by Erica Kennedy
• Shifting Through Neutral by Bridgett M. Davis

  2004 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• A Place Between Stations by Stephanie Allen
• Knee-Deep in Wonder by April Reynolds

• Daughter by Asha Bandele
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
• Getting Mother’s Body by Suzan-Lori Parks

  Fiction

• Hunting in Harlem by Mat Johnson

• A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips
• The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke

• Hottentot Venus by Barbara Chase-Riboud
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
• The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

  Nonfiction

• In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood

• Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity by E. Patrick Johnson
• Mandela, Mobutu and Me by Lynne Duke

• Always Wear Joy: My Mother Bold and Beautiful by Susan Fales-Hill
• Somebody’s Someone by Regina Louise
• Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

  2003 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones

• A Little Piece Of Sky by Nicole Bailey-Williams
• Fifth Born by Zelda Lockhart

• Gigantic by Marc Nesbitt
• River Woman by Donna Hemans
• Song of the Water Saints by Nelly Rosario

  Fiction

• The Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda

• Douglass’ Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes
• The Ecstatic by Victor Lavalle

• Discretion by Elizabeth Nunez
• Water Street by Crystal Wilkinson
• Without a Name and Under the Tongue by Yvonne Vera

  Nonfiction

• Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies by Elizabeth McHenry

• Passed On: African American Mourning Stories by Karla FC Holloway
• The Herndons: An Atlanta Family by Carole Merritt

• American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America by Leon E. Wynter
• Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius by Lawrence Jackson

  2002 Winners and Finalists

Debut Fiction

• Gabriel’s Story by David Anthony Durham

• Greenwichtown by Joyce Palmer
• The Red Moon by Kuwana Haulsey

• Breathing Room by Patricia Elam
• Break Any Woman Down by Dana Johnson
• The Dying Ground by Nichelle D. Tramble

  Fiction

• Erasure by Percival Everett

• Bombingham by Anthony Grooms
• October Suite by Maxine Clair

• Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley
• He Sleeps by Reginald McKnight
• The Warmest December by Bernice L. McFadden

  Nonfiction

• In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understand His Father’s Legacy by Ken Wiwa

• On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A’Lelia Bundles
• The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist’s Journey, 1898–1939 by Paul Robeson Jr.

• Impossible Witnesses: Truths, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony by Dwight McBride
• Raising Fences: A Black Man’s Love Story by Michael Datcher
• Salvation: Black People and Love by bell hooks