Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award is an American literary award dedicated to honoring written works that make important contributions to the understanding of racism and the appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture. Established in 1935 by Cleveland poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf and originally administered by the Saturday Review, the awards have been administered by the Cleveland Foundation since 1963.

Several awards in the categories of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and lifetime achievement are given out each year. Notable past winners include Zora Neale Hurston (1943), Langston Hughes (1954), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1959), Maxine Hong Kingston (1978), Wole Soyinka (1983), Nadine Gordimer (1988), Toni Morrison (1988), Ralph Ellison (1992), Edward Said (2000), and Derek Walcott (2004).

Winners

Fiction

• 2015 - Marlon James for A Brief History of Seven Killings
• 2014 - Anthony Marra for A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
• 2014 - Adrian Matejka for The Big Smoke
• 2013 – Eugene Gloria for My Favorite Warlord
• 2013 – Laird Hunt for Kind One
• 2013 – Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds
• 2012 – Esi Edugyan for Half-Blood Blues
• 2011 – Nicole Krauss for Great House
• 2011 – Mary Helen Stefaniak for The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
• 2010 – Kamila Shamsie for Burnt Shadows
• 2009 – Louise Erdrich for The Plague of Doves
• 2009 – Nam Le for The Boat
• 2008 – Junot Diaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• 2008 – Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• 2007 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun
• 2007 – Martha Collins for Blue Front
• 2006 – Zadie Smith for On Beauty
• 2005 – Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker
• 2004 – Edward P. Jones for The Known World
• 2003 – Stephen L. Carter for The Emperor of Ocean Park
• 2003 – Reetika Vazirani for World Hotel
• 2002 – Colson Whitehead for John Henry Days
• 2000 – Chang-Rae Lee for A Gesture Life
• 1999 – Russell Banks for Cloudsplitter
• 1998 – Walter Mosley for Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
• 1997 – Jamaica Kincaid for Autobiography of My Mother
• 1996 – Madison Smartt Bell for All Souls' Rising
• 1995 – Reginald Gibbons for Sweetbitter: A Novel
• 1994 – Judith Ortiz Cofer for The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry
• 1993 – Sandra Cisneros for Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
• 1990 - Dolores Kendrick for The Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women
• 1988 – Nadine Gordimer for A Sport of Nature
• 1988 – Toni Morrison for Beloved
• 1985 – Breyten Breytenbach for Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel
• 1969 – Gwendolyn Brooks for In the Mecca; Poems
• 1962 – Gina Allen for The Forbidden Man
• 1954 – Langston Hughes for Simple Takes a Wife
• 1951 – John Hersey for The Wall
• 1949 – Alan Paton for Cry, the Beloved Country
• 1948 – Worth Tuttle Hedden for The Other Room
• 1947 – Sholem Asch for East River
• 1945 – Gwethalyn Graham for Earth and High Heaven

Poetry

• 2015 - Jericho Brown for The New Testament
• 2015 - Marilyn Chin for Hard Love Province

Nonfiction

• 2015 - Richard S. Dunn for A Tale of Two Plantations
• 2014 - Ari Shavit for My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel
• 2013 – Andrew Solomon for Far From the Tree
• 2012 – David Blight for American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era
• 2012 – David Livingstone Smith for Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others
• 2011 – David Eltis and David Richardson for Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
• 2011 – Isabel Wilkerson for The Warmth of Other Suns
• 2009 – Annette Gordon-Reed for The Hemingses of Monticello
• 2008 – Ayaan Hirsi Ali for Infidel.
• 2007 – Scott Reynolds Nelson for Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry: the Untold Story of an American Legend
• 2006 – Jill Lepore for New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan
• 2005 – A. Van Jordan for Macnolia: Poems
• 2005 – Geoffrey C. Ward for Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (about boxer Jack Johnson)
• 2004 – Ira Berlin for Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves
• 2004 – Adrian Nicole LeBlanc for Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
• 2003 – Samantha Power for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
• 2002 – Quincy Jones for Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
• 2002 – Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed for Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir
• 2001 – David Levering Lewis for W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963
• 2001 – F. X. Toole for Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner
• 2000 – Edward W. Said for Out of Place: A Memoir
• 1999 – John Lewis, Michael D'Orso for Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (about the American Civil Rights Movement)
• 1998 – Toi Derricotte for The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey
• 1997 – James McBride for The Color of Water
• 1996 – Jonathan Kozol for Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation
• 1995 – Brent Staples for Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White
• 1995 – William H. Tucker for The Science and Politics of Racial Research
• 1994 – David Levering Lewis for W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader
• 1994 – Ronald Takaki for A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
• 1993 – Kwame Anthony Appiah for In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
• 1993 – Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas for The Civilization of the Goddess
• 1992 – Melissa Fay Greene for Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction
• 1992 – Peter Hayes for Lessons and Legacies I: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World
• 1992 – Elaine Mensh, Harry Mensh for The IQ Mythology: Class, Race, Gender, and Inequality
• 1992 – Marilyn Nelson for The Homeplace
• 1991 – Carol Beckwith, Angela Fisher, Graham Hancock for African Ark: People and Ancient Cultures of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa
• 1991 – Walter A. Jackson for Gunnar Myrdal and America's Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987
• 1991 – Forrest G. Wood for The Arrogance Of Faith: Christianity and Race in America
• 1990 – Dolores Kendrick for The Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women
• 1990 – Hugh Honour for The Image of the Black in Western Art: Part 1
• 1989 – Taylor Branch for Parting the Waters: America in the King Years
• 1989 – Henry Louis Gates Jr. for Collected Black Women's Narratives
• 1989 – George Lipsitz for Life In The Struggle
• 1989 – Peter Sutton for Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia
• 1988 – Jeffrey Jay Foxx and Walter F. Morris, Jr. for Living Maya
• 1988 – Abigail M. Thernstrom for Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights
• 1987 – Arnold Rampersad for The Life of Langston Hughes
• 1987 – Gail Sheehy for Spirit of Survival
• 1986 – Donald Alexander Downs for Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community and the First Amendment
• 1986 – James North for Freedom Rising
• 1986 – Barton Wright and Clifford Bahnimptewa for Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary
• 1985 – David S. Wyman for The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945
• 1984 – Jose Alcina Franch for Pre-Columbian Art
• 1984 – Humbert S. Nelli for From Immigrants to Ethnics: The Italian Americans
• 1983 – Richard Rodriguez for Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
• 1983 – Wole Soyinka for Aké: The Years of Childhood
• 1982 – Geoffrey G. Field for Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain
• 1982 – Peter J. Powell for People of the Sacred Mountain
• 1981 - Carol Beckwith and Tepilit Ole Saitoti for Maasai
• 1981 – Jamake Highwater for Song from the Earth: American Indian painting
• 1980 – Urie Bronfenbrenner for The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design
• 1980 – Richard Borshay Lee for The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society
• 1979 – Phillip V. Tobias for The Bushmen: San hunters and herders of Southern Africa
• 1978 – Allan Chase for Legacy of Malthus
• 1978 – Maxine Hong Kingston for The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
• 1977 – Richard Kluger for Simple Justice
• 1977 – Michi Weglyn for Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps
• 1976 – Lucy S. Dawidowicz for The War Against the Jews: 1933–1945
• 1976 – Thomas Kiernan for The Arabs: Their History, Aims, and Challenge to the Industrialized World
• 1976 – Raphael Patai and Jennifer P. Wing for The Myth of the Jewish race
• 1975 – Eugene D. Genovese for Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
• 1975 – Leon Poliakov for The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalistic Ideas In Europe
• 1974 – Charles Duguid for Doctor and the Aborigines
• 1974 – Michel Fabre for The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright
• 1974 – Albie Sachs for Justice in South Africa
• 1974 – Louis Leo Snyder for The Dreyfus Case: A Documentary History
• 1973 – Pat Conroy for The Water Is Wide
• 1973 – Betty Fladeland for Men & Brothers
• 1973 – Lee Rainwater for Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Family Life in a Federal Slum
• 1972 – George M. Fredrickson for The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914
• 1972 – John S. Haller for Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900
• 1972 – David Loye for The Healing of a Nation
• 1972 – Naboth Mokgatle for The Autobiography of an Unknown South African
• 1972 – Donald L. Robinson for Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765–1820
• 1971 – Robert William July for A History of the African People
• 1971 – Carleton Mabee for Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War
• 1971 – Stan Steiner for La Raza: The Mexican Americans
• 1971 – Anthony Wallace for Death and Rebirth of Seneca
• 1970 – Dan T. Carter for Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (about the Scottsboro boys)
• 1970 – Vine Deloria for Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto
• 1970 – Florestan Fernandes for The Negro in Brazilian Society
• 1970 – Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis for The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans during World War II
• 1969 – E. Earl Baughman and W. Grant Dahlstrom for Negro and White Children: A Psychological Study in the Rural South
• 1969 – Leonard Dinnerstein for The Leo Frank Case
• 1969 – Stuart Levine and Nancy O. Lurie for The American Indian Today
• 1968 – Norman Rufus Colin Cohn for Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• 1968 – Robert Coles for Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear
• 1968 – Raul Hilberg for The Destruction of the European Jews
• 1968 – Erich Kahler for The Jews among the Nations
• 1967 – David Brion Davis for The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
• 1967 – Oscar Lewis for La Vida
• 1966 – H. C. Baldry for Unity Mankind Greek Thought
• 1966 – Claude Brown for Manchild in the Promised Land
• 1966 – Malcolm X and Alex Haley for The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• 1966 – Amram Scheinfeld for Your Heredity and Environment
• 1965 – Milton M. Gordon for Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins
• 1965 – James M. McPherson for The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction
• 1965 – Abram L. Sachar for A History of the Jews, Revised Edition
• 1965 – James W. Silver for Mississippi: The Closed Society
• 1964 – Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan for Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City
• 1964 – Harold R. Isaacs for The New World of Negro Americans
• 1964 – Bernard E. Olson for Faith and Prejudice
• 1963 – Theodosius Dobzhansky for Mankind Evolving
• 1962 – Dwight L. Dumond for Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America
• 1962 – John Howard Griffin for Black Like Me
• 1961 – E. R. Braithwaite for To Sir, With Love
• 1961 – Louis E. Lomax for The Reluctant African
• 1960 – Basil Davidson for Lost Cities of Africa
• 1960 – John Haynes Holmes for I Speak for Myself
• 1959 – Martin Luther King Jr. for Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
• 1959 – George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger for Racial and Cultural Minorities:: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination
• 1958 – Jessie B. Sams for White Mother
• 1958 – South African Institute of Race Relations for Handbook on Race Relations
• 1957 – Gilberto Freyre for The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization
• 1957 – Father Trevor Huddleston for Naught for Your Comfort
• 1956 – John P. Dean and Alex Rosen for A Manual of Intergroup Relations
• 1956 – George W. Shepherd for They Wait in Darkness
• 1955 – Oden Meeker for Report on Africa
• 1955 – Lyle Saunders for Cultural Differences and Medical Care
• 1954 – Vernon Bartlett for Struggle for Africa
• 1953 – Farley Mowat for People of the Deer
• 1953 – Han Suyin for A Many-Splendoured Thing
• 1952 – Brewton Berry for Race Relations
• 1952 – Laurens Van Der Post for Venture to the Interior
• 1951 – Henry Gibbs for Twilight in South Africa
• 1950 – S. Andhil Fineberg for Punishment Without Crime
• 1950 – Shirley Graham for Your Most Humble Servant
• 1949 – J.C. Furnas for Anatomy of Paradise
• 1948 - John Collier for The Indians of the Americas
• 1947 – Pauline R. Kibbe for Latin Americans in Texas
• 1946 – St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton for Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City
• 1946 – Wallace Stegner and the editors of Look for One Nation
• 1945 – Gunnar Myrdal for An American Dilemma
• 1944 – Roi Ottley for New World A-Coming
• 1944 – Maurice Samuel for The World of Sholom Aleichem
• 1943 – Zora Neale Hurston for Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
• 1942 – Leopold Infeld for Quest: An Autobiography
• 1942 – James G. Leyburn for The Haitian People
• 1941 – Louis Adamic for From Many Lands
• 1940 – Edward Franklin Frazier for The Negro Family in the United States
• 1937 – Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon for We Europeans: A Survey of "Racial" Problems
• 1936 – Harold Foote Gosnell for Negro Politicians: Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago

Lifetime achievement

• 2015 - David Brion Davis
• 2014 - Sir Wilson Harris
• 2014 - George Lamming
• 2012 – Wole Soyinka
• 2012 – Arnold Rampersad
• 2011 – John Edgar Wideman
• 2010 – Elizabeth Alexander
• 2010 – William Julius Wilson
• 2010 – Oprah Winfrey
• 2009 – Paule Marshall
• 2008 – William Melvin Kelley
• 2007 – Taylor Branch
• 2006 – William Demby
• 2005 – August Wilson
• 2004 – Derek Walcott
• 2003 – Adrienne Kennedy
• 2002 – Jay Wright
• 2001 – Lucille Clifton
• 2000 – Ernest Gaines
• 1999 – John Hope Franklin
• 1998 – Gordon Parks
• 1997 – Albert L. Murray
• 1996 – Dorothy West

Special Achievement Award

• 1992 – Ralph Ellison for Invisible Man

External links

• Anisfield-Wolf.org – official website
• Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards at lovethebook.com