The In the Margins Award, established in 2013, is an annual literary award presented to fiction and nonfiction "self published books by, for and about people of color living in the margins." [1] The primary audience of the books is generally individuals aged 9-21 who are Black, Indigenous People of Color; "youth from a street culture," "youth in restrictive custody," and/or "youth who are reluctant readers." [2]
The In the Margins Award was established as part of the Library Services for Youth in Custody but since 2017, has operated independently. [1]
Year | Genre | Author | Title | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2014 | Fiction | Paul Langan | Survivor | [3] |
Sharon E McKay and Daniel Lafance (Illus.) | War Brothers: The Graphic Novel | |||
Terra Elan McVoy | Criminal | |||
Meg Medina | Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass | |||
Susan Nussbaum | Good Kings, Bad Kings | |||
Jeff Rivera | No Matter What | |||
Darlene Ryan | Pieces of Me | |||
Pamela Samuels Young | Anybody’s Daughter | |||
Nonfiction | M. K. Asante | Buck: A Memoir | ||
Marilyn Denise Jones | From Crack to College and Vice Versa | |||
2015 | Fiction | Lynne Ewing | The Lure | [4] |
Ashley Little | Anatomy of a Girl Gang | |||
Kekla Magoon | How It Went Down | |||
Jason Reynolds | When I Was the Greatest | |||
P. D. Workman | Ruby: Between the Cracks (Volume 1) | |||
Nonfiction | Pacc Butler | From God’s Monster to the Devil’s Angel | ||
Ebony Canion | Left for Dead | |||
Michelle Miles | The High Price I Had to Pay 2: Sentenced to 30 Years as a Nonviolent, First Time Offender | |||
Rayshawn Wilson | Lionheart: Coming from Where I’m From | |||
Angela Beth Zusman | The Griots of Oakland: Voices from the African American Oral History Project | |||
2016 | Fiction | Kevin Deutch | The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips | [5] |
E. R. Frank | Dime | |||
Peggy Kern | Little Peach | |||
Patti Laboucane-Benson | The Outside Circle | |||
PD Workman | Tattooed Teardrops | |||
Nonfiction | Tewhan Butler | America’s Massacre: The Audacity of Despair and a Message of Hope | ||
Alton Carter | The Boy Who Carried Bricks: A True Story of Survival | |||
Tony Lewis, Jr. | Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration | |||
Richard Ross | Girls In Justice | |||
Julian Voloj | Ghetto Brother: Warrior to Peacemaker | |||
2017 | Fiction | Christy Lynn Abram | Little Miss Somebody | [6] |
Michael McLellan | American Flowers | |||
Nonfiction | Alton Carter | Aging Out: A True Story | ||
Kathleen Glasgow | Girl in Pieces | |||
Ben Westhoff | Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap | |||
S. C. Sterling | Teenage Degenerate | |||
Ni-Ni Simone | Dear Yvette | |||
C. Desire | Other Broken Things | |||
Jeffry W. Johnston | The Truth | |||
Free Minds Book Club | The Untold Story of the Real Me: Young Voices from Prison | |||
2018 | Fiction | Beacon House Writers. K. Crutcher (Ed.) with Z. Gatti (Design) | The Day Tajon Got Shot | [7] |
Peter Edwards | The Biker’s Brother | |||
Beth Goobie | The Pain Eater | |||
William Kowalski | Jumped In | |||
Tony Medina with John Jennings and Stacey Robinson (Illus.) | I am Alfonso Jones | |||
Colleen Nelson | Blood Brothers | |||
Christopher Paslay | White Flight | |||
Nonfiction | Eve Porinchak | One Cut | ||
Taura Stinson and Stacey Debono (Eds.) and Glenn Adhama (Illus.) | 100 Things Every Black Girl Should Know | |||
Poetry | rm drake | Broken Flowers: And Other Stairways to Heaven | ||
2019 | Fiction | Hobson Brandon | Where the Dead Sit Talking | [8] [9] |
2E G | Queenpin | |||
Brown Kevin | Hard Knocks High: Darkskins and Redbones | |||
Colfer Eoin , Andrew Donkin, and Giovanni Rigano (Illus.) | Illegal | |||
Nonfiction | Goozh Judi and Sue Jeweler | Tell Me About When Moms and Dads Go to Jail: Tell Me About Jail | ||
Goozh Judi and Sue Jeweler | Tell Me About When Moms and Dads Come Home From Jail: Tell Me About Jail | |||
Griffin-Wallace Valencia | Motherless Child: A Journey of Growing Up and Forgiving | |||
Hawkins Lamont U-God | Raw: My Journey Into the Wu-Tang | |||
Hobson Brandon | Where the Dead Sit Talking | |||
Krosoczka Jarrett | Hey, Kiddo | |||
Latin American Youth Center Writers and Santiago Casares | Voces sin Fronteras: Our Stories, Our Truth | |||
Ramos Nonieqa | The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary | |||
2020 | Fiction | Tasha Spillett-Sumner and Natasha Donavan | Surviving the City | [10] |
Sonia Patel | Bloody Seoul | |||
René Colato Laínez and Fabricio Vanden Broeck | My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando tres Fronteras | |||
Annette D. Taylor | Dreams on Fire | |||
Erika T. Wurth | You Who Enter Here | |||
Nonfiction | Tytianna N. M. Wells and Ashley Cathey | When Hip Hop Met Poetry: An Urban Love Story | ||
Johnathan Harris and Gary Leach | Colorblind: A Story on Racism | |||
Jean Mendoza , Debbie Reese, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz | An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People (ReVisioning American History for Young People) | |||
Rex Ogle | Free Lunch | |||
Damon Young | What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger | |||
2021 | Fiction | Normandy D. Piccolo | Why is Kristyn a Kutter? | [11] |
James Price | The Comeback: I Raised These Streets | |||
David A. Robertson , Scott B. Henderson, and Donavan Yaciuk | The Reckoner Rise: Breakdown | |||
Michael W. Waters and Keisha Morris | For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World | |||
Nonfiction | Mark Bleschke | Into the Streets: A Young Person’s Visual History of Protest in the United States | ||
Heather Gale and Mika Song | Ho'onani: Hula Warrior | |||
Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bendele | When They Call You a Terrorist: A Story of Black Lives Matter and the Power to Change the World | |||
Passage Academy Students at Belmont | Everything I Been Through | |||
2022 | Fiction | Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson | Milo Imagines the World | [12] |
Sharon G. Flake | The Life I’m In | |||
Free Minds Writers | They Called Me 299-359: Poetry by the Incarcerated Youth of Free Minds | |||
Emolie Kpadea , Japan Spells, Damarco Taylor, and Rob Gibson | And Justice for Who? | |||
Nonfiction | John Lewis , Andrew Aydin, L. Fury, and Nate Powell | Run: Book One | ||
Chella Man and Ashley Lukashevsky | Continuum (A Pocket Change Collective) | |||
Marcia Argueta Mickelson | Where I Belong | |||
Victorya Rouse | Finding Refuge: Real Life Immigration Stories From Young People | |||
Elisabet Velasquez | When We Make It | |||
Frank Abe , Tamiko Nimura, Ross Ishikawa, and Matt Sasaki | We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance at Wartime Incarceration |
Stephanie Kuehn is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for her William C. Morris Award-winning debut novel Charm & Strange, Delicate Monsters, and Complicit. Her novels often explore themes of mental illness and psychology.
Candace Groth Fleming is an American writer of children's books, both fiction and non-fiction. She is the author of more than twenty books for children and young adults, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-honored The Family Romanov and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award-winning biography, The Lincolns, among others.
The Crossover is a 2012 children's book by American author Kwame Alexander and the winner of the 2015 Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award Honor. The book, which is told entirely through verse, was first published in the United States in hardback on March 18, 2014, through HMH Books for Young Readers.
Rebecca Albertalli is an American author of young adult fiction and former psychologist. She is known for her 2015 debut novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, which was adapted into the 2018 film Love, Simon and inspired the spin-off television series Love, Victor. Albertalli has subsequently published seven additional novel-length works of young adult fiction, along with 2020's novella Love, Creekwood, from which Albertalli has donated all proceeds to The Trevor Project.
Alex Gino is a genderqueer American children's book writer. Gino's debut book, Melissa, was the winner of the 2016 Stonewall Book Award and the 2016 Lambda Literary Award in the category of LGBT Children's/Young Adult.
Brandy Colbert is an American author of young adult fiction and nonfiction.
Kekla Magoon is an American author, best known for her NAACP Image Award-nominated young adult novel The Rock and the River, How It Went Down, The Season of Styx Malone, and X. In 2021, she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her body of work. Her works also include middle grade novels, short stories, and historical, socio-political, and economy-related non-fiction.
Justina Ireland is an American science fiction and fantasy author of young adult fiction and former editor-in-chief of the FIYAH Literary Magazine. She received the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Non-Professional Work. Her New York Times bestselling novel Dread Nation won the 2019 Locus Award, and was nominated for the Andre Norton, Bram Stoker, and Lodestar Awards.
Debbie Reese is a Nambé Pueblo scholar and educator. Reese founded American Indians in Children's Literature, which analyzes representations of Native and Indigenous peoples in children's literature. She co-edited a young adult adaptation of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States with Jean Mendoza in 2019.
Rise: A Feminist Book Project, formerly known as the Amelia Bloomer Project and compiled by the American Library Association, is an annual list of books with significant feminist content that are intended for readers from birth to age 18. The Amelia Bloomer Project was started in 2002 and continued annually until the name change in 2020. Rise is unique from other book lists in that it selects books based on content.
The Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature, known as "The Walters,” was created by the American nonprofit We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) in 2014, and the inaugural award was presented in 2016. Named after young adult author Walter Dean Myers, the award recognizes published, diverse authors who champion marginalized voices in their stories. The awards program is managed by WNDB's co-directors Kathie Weinberg and Terry Hong. In 2018, WNDB changed the categories from a single category of young adult titles to two categories of teen and young readers. Subsequent awards include both categories.
Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America's First Black Paratroopers is a nonfiction book geared toward children, written by Tanya Lee Stone and published January 22, 2013 by Candlewick Press. The book tells the story of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed The Triple Nickles, an all-Black airborne unit of the United States Army during World War II.
The Sun Is Also a Star is a young adult novel by American author Nicola Yoon, published November 1, 2016, by Delacorte Press. The book follows two characters, one of whom is about to be deported, and explores “the ways in which we are all connected and the ways in which people across all walks of life have much more in common than they think they do.”
When Stars Are Scattered is a nonfiction young adult graphic novel written by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, illustrated by Victoria Jamieson and Iman Geddy, and published April 14, 2020, by Dial Books.
Traci Sorell is an American author of fiction and nonfiction works for teens and an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.
Don Brown is an American author and illustrator of children's books.
Robin Stevenson is a Canadian author of thirty books for kids and teens. Her writing has been translated into several languages, and published in more than a dozen countries. Robin's books regularly receive starred reviews, have won the Silver Birch Award, the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize and a Stonewall Book Award, and have been finalists for the Governor General's Awards, the Lambda Literary Award, and others. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, for toddlers through teens.
Gail Jarrow is an American children's book author and teacher.
Rex Ogle is an American author and editor who has published more than 100 books, including those written under various pseudonyms, such as Trey King, Honest Lee, and Rey Terciero. In addition to writing and editing for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, Ogle has written a number of graphic novels and memoirs, including Free Lunch.
Mary Beth Leatherdale is a Canadian author and storyteller.