| American Book Awards | |
|---|---|
| Date | 1978–present |
| Country | United States |
| Hosted by | Before Columbus Foundation |
| Website | beforecolumbusfoundation |
The American Book Awards are an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers." [1]
The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit Before Columbus Foundation, which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980. [2] [3] The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. [4] Previous winners include novelists, social scientists, philosophers, poets, and historians such as Toni Morrison, Edward Said, MacKenzie Bezos, Isabel Allende, bell hooks, Don DeLillo, Derrick Bell, Robin Kelley, Joy Harjo and Tommy J. Curry.
In 1980, the unrelated National Book Awards was renamed American Book Awards. In 1987 it was renamed back to National Book Awards. [5] Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation.
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| Author(s) [18] | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Reginald Dwayne Betts | Felon: Poems | W.W. Norton |
| Sara Borjas | Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff | Noemi Press |
| Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell (editors) | Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman | City Lights |
| Staceyann Chin | Crossfire: A Litany for Survival | Haymarket |
| Kali Fajardo-Anstine | Sabrina & Corina: Stories | One World |
| Tara Fickle | The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities | New York University Press |
| Erika Lee | America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States | Basic Books |
| Yoko Ogawa | The Memory Police | Pantheon |
| Jake Skeets | Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers | Milkweed Editions |
| George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker | They Called Us Enemy | Top Shelf Productions |
| Ocean Vuong | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | Penguin |
| De'Shawn Charles Winslow | In West Mills | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Albert Woodfox with Leslie George | Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope | Grove Press |
| Eleanor W. Traylor | Lifetime Achievement Award | |
| Kofi Natambu | Editor Award: The Panopticon Review | |
| Jasper Bernes, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr | Publisher Award: Commune Editions | |
| Amalia Leticia Ortiz | Oral Literature Award | |
| Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll (editors) | Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy |
| Author(s) [19] | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Ayad Akhtar | Homeland Elegies | Little, Brown & Co. |
| Maisy Card | These Ghosts Are Family | Simon & Schuster |
| Anthony Cody | Borderland Apocrypha | Omnidawn Press |
| Ben Ehrenreich | Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time | Counterpoint |
| Johanna Fernández | The Young Lords: A Radical History | University of North Carolina Press |
| Carolyn Forché | In the Lateness of the World: Poems | Penguin Press |
| John Giorno | Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Cathy Park Hong | Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning | One World |
| Randall Horton | {#289-128}: Poems | University of Kentucky |
| Gerald Horne | The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century | Monthly Review Press |
| Robert P. Jones | White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity | Simon & Schuster |
| Judy Juanita | Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland | Equidistance Press |
| William Melvin Kelley (author), Aiki Kelley (illustrator) | Dunfords Travels Everywheres | Anchor Books |
| Maryemma Graham | Lifetime Achievement Award | |
| Shana Redmond | Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson | |
| Jacob Soboroff | Anti-Censorship Award: Separated: Inside an American Tragedy |
| Author(s) [20] | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Spencer Ackerman | Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump | Viking |
| Esther G. Belin, Jeff Burgland, Connie A. Jacobs, Anthony K. Webster | The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature | University of Arizona Press |
| Emma Brodie | Songs in Ursa Major | Knopf |
| Daphne Brooks | Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound | Harvard University Press |
| Myriam J. A. Chancy | What Storm, What Thunder | Tin House Books |
| Francisco Goldman | Monkey Boy | Grove Press |
| Zakiya Dalila Harris | The Other Black Girl: A Novel | Atria Books |
| Fatima Shaik | Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood | The Historic New Orleans Collection |
| Edwin Torres | Quanundrum: [i will be your many angled thing] | Roof Books |
| Truong Tran | Book of the Other: Small in Comparison | Kaya Press |
| Mai Der Vang | Yellow Rain | Graywolf Press |
| Phillip B. Williams | Mutiny | Penguin Books |
| Michelle Zauner | Crying in H Mart: A Memoir | Knopf |
| Gayl Jones | Lifetime Achievement Award | |
| Jessica E. Teague | Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award: Sound Recording Technology and American Literature | |
| Jeffrey St. Clair | Anti-Censorship Award | |
| Wave Books: Charlie Wright (Publisher) / Joshua Beckman (Editor in Chief) | Editor/Publisher Award |
| Author(s) [21] | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Ayanna Lloyd Banwo | When We Were Birds | Doubleday |
| Edgar Gomez | High-Risk Homosexual | Soft Skull |
| Kelly Lytle Hernández | Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands | W.W. Norton & Company |
| Everett Hoagland | The Ways: Poems of Affirmation, Reflection and Wonder | North Star Nova Press |
| Anne Hyde | Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West | W.W. Norton & Company |
| Jamil Jan Kochai | The Haunting of Haji Hotak and Other Stories | Viking |
| Aidan Levy | Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins | Hachette Books |
| Bojan Louis | Sinking Bell: Stories | Gray Wolf Press |
| Leila Mottley | Nightcrawling | Knopf |
| Darryl Pinckney | Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Sherry Shenoda | Mummy Eaters | University of Nebraska Press |
| Mosab Abu Toha | Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza | City Lights Books |
| Javier Zamora | Solito: A Memoir | Hogarth |
| Maxine Hong Kingston | Lifetime Achievement Award | |
| Neta Crawford | Anti-Censorship Award | |
| Bell hooks | Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism |
| Author(s) [22] [23] [24] | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni | Independence: A Novel | William Morrow |
| Debra Magpie Earling | The Lost Journals of Sacajawea: A Novel | Milkweed Editions |
| Paul S. Flores | We Still Be: Poems and Performances | El Martillo Press |
| Aisha Abdel Gawad | Between Two Moons: A Novel | Doubleday |
| Gregg Hecimovich | The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative | Ecco |
| C. L. R. James, Nic Watts (adapted), Sakina Karimjee (illustrator) | Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History | Verso |
| R. F. Kuang | Yellowface | William Morrow |
| Felipe Luciano | Flesh & Spirit: Confessions of a Young Lord | Empire State Editions |
| Fae Myenne Ng | Orphan Bachelors | Grove Press |
| Roger Reeves | Dark Days: Fugitive Essays | Graywolf |
| John N. Roberts | Changing the Commons: Stories About Place Making | ORO Editions |
| Barbara D. Savage | Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar | Yale University Press |
| Rachel L. Swarns | The 272: The Families Who were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church | Random House |
| Henry Threadgill, Brent Hayes Edwards | Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music | Knopf |
| Valerie Wilson Wesley | A Shimmer of Red (An Odessa Jones Mystery) | Kensington |
| Rosanna Xia | California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline | Heyday |
| John Yau | Please Wait by the Coatroom: Reconsidering Race and Identity in American Art | Black Sparrow Press |
| Monica Youn | From From | Graywolf |
| Jessica Hagerdon | Lifetime Achievement Award | |
| Jeff Deutsch (publisher) / Parneshia Jones (editor) | Editor/Publisher Award | |
| Rabbi Michael Lerner | Tikkun Magazine | |
| Jeffrey D. Sachs | Anti-Censorship Award | |
| Asna Tabassum | Anti-Censorship Award | |
| Lynnée Denise | Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters | University of Texas Press |
| Brenda M. Greene | Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: "Book Review: Erasure by Percival Everett, The Basis for the Film American Fiction" | Our Time Press |
| Mehdi Hasan | Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: Zeteo | |
| Kate Wagner | Walter & Lilliam Lowenfels Award for Criticism: "Behind F1's Velvet Curtain" | Escape Collection |
