1. Awards Categories
     Legacy Award    North Star Award    Ella Baker Award    Madam C.J. Walker Award    Award for College Writers  

2. 2018 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction    Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

3. 2017 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction    Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

4. 2016 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction    Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

5. 2015 Winners and Finalists
    Fiction  Nonfiction  Poetry 

6. 2014 Winners and Finalists
     Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

7. 2013 Winners and Finalists
     Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

8. 2012 Winners and Finalists
     Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

9. 2011 Winners and Finalists
     Fiction    Nonfiction    Poetry  

10. 2010 Winners and Finalists
     Fiction  Nonfiction  Poetry 

11. 2009 Winners and Finalists
     Fiction  Nonfiction  Poetry 

12. 2008 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction  Fiction  Nonfiction  Poetry 

13. 2007 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction  Fiction  Nonfiction  Poetry 

14. 2006 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction  Fiction  Nonfiction  Contemporary Fiction 

15. 2005 Winners and Finalists
      Debut Fiction    Fiction   Nonfiction  Contemporary Fiction 

16. 2004 Winners and Finalists
     Debut Fiction  Fiction  Nonfiction 

17. 2003 Winners and Finalists
      Debut Fiction    Fiction    Nonfiction  

18. 2002 Winners and Finalists
      Debut Fiction    Fiction    Nonfiction  

19. References

20. External links

The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program honors Black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers.^[1][2]

Each fall, writers and publishers are invited to submit fiction, nonfiction and poetry books published that year. Panels of acclaimed writers serve as judges to select nominees, finalists and winners. A number of merit awards are also presented.^[3] Nominees are honored at the Legacy Awards ceremony, held the third Friday in October. The awards ceremony is hosted and organized by the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

The 2018 award honorees were announced in June.^[4]

Awards Categories

Legacy Award

The Legacy Awards, granted for fiction, nonfiction and poetry, are selected in a juried competition.^[5]

The 2018 award winners were Alain Mabanckou in fiction for Black Moses; Ladee Hubbard in debut fiction for The Talented Ribkins; Tiya Miles in nonfiction for The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits; and Evie Shockley in poetry for Semiautomatic.^[6][7]

North Star Award

The North Star Award pays homage to the significance of the North Star for enslaved Africans, who looked to it as a guide to freedom. The recipients of the award are individuals whose writing and/or service to the writing community serves as a beacon of brilliant accomplishment and as an inspiration to others.

The 2018 North Star award winner was Ntozake Shange, author of the Obie Award-winning choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.^[8][9] Shange was presented with the award a week before her death.

Ella Baker Award

The Ella Baker Award, named for the heroic civil rights activist, recognizes writers and arts activists for exceptional work that advances social justice.

There was no 2018 winner. The 2017 Ella Baker award winner was Congressman John Lewis.^[10][11]

Madam C.J. Walker Award

The Madam C.J. Walker Award, named for the pioneering entrepreneur and philanthropist, recognizes exceptional innovation in supporting and sustaining Black literature.

The 2018 Madam C.J. Walker award winner was Dr. Charles Rowell, founder and editor of the literary journal Callaloo.^[12]

Award for College Writers

The Hurston/Wright Foundation honors excellence in writing by Black college students with the Award for College Writers. The award, sponsored by Amistad books, a division of Harper Collins Publishers, is presented in the categories of fiction and poetry.

The 2018 Award for College Writers recipients were Desiree Evans in fiction and Christell Victoria Roach in poetry.^[13]

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

Winner:

• 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
• A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South 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

Winner:

• 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
• The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America 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

Winner:

• 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

References

External links

• Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, official website

• Scottish Catholic Observer
• Scottish Central Railway
• Scottish Challenge
• Scottish Challenge presented by Bank of Scotland Corporate
• Scottish Chaucerians
• Scottish Chieftain (horse)
• Scottish Children's Reporter Administration
• Scottish Children's Reporters Administration
• Scottish Chronicle
• Scottish churches
• Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office
• Scottish Church Society
• Scottish Civic Trust
• Scottish civil service
• Scottish Civil War
• Scottish Civil War (disambiguation)
• Scottish Clan
• Scottish clan chief
• Scottish CND
• Scottish coat of arms
• Scottish Coinage
• Scottish coinage
• Scottish colonisation
• Scottish colonization of the Americas
• Scottish colony