Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominees and Winning Books

Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Winning Books

The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award™ honors the best in Black literature. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers. Fiction, debut fiction, nonfiction, and poetry honorees are selected in a juried competition. Each October, the award winners are celebrated during the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards that draws hundreds of literary stars, readers, representatives of the publishing industry, the arts, media, politics, and academia. Learn more at the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s website


20 Books Honored by the Hurston/Wright Foundation in 2016

Winner - Debut Fiction


Winner - Fiction


Winner - Nonfiction


Winner - Poetry

Forest Primeval: Poems
by Vievee Francis

List Price: $16.95
TriQuarterly Books (Nov 30, 2015)
Poetry, Paperback, 104 pages
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Finalist - Fiction


Finalist - Fiction


Finalist - Nonfiction


Finalist - Nonfiction

Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic
by Gerald Horne

List Price: $25.00
Monthly Review Press (Oct 22, 2015)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 416 pages
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Finalist - Poetry


Finalist - Poetry


Nominee - Debut Fiction


Nominee - Debut Fiction


Nominee - Fiction


Nominee - Fiction


Nominee - Nonfiction

Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America’s Black Colleges and Culture
by Ron Stodghill

List Price: $26.99
Amistad (Sep 22, 2015)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 272 pages
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Nominee - Nonfiction

Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of How We "Catch" Mental Illness
by Harriet A. Washington

List Price: $15.99
Back Bay Books (Oct 04, 2016)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 320 pages
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Nominee - Nonfiction

The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America
by D. Watkins

List Price: $21.99
Hot Books (Sep 08, 2015)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 176 pages
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Nominee - Poetry


Nominee - Poetry

It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time: Poems
by Angela Jackson

List Price: $18.95
TriQuarterly Books (Feb 15, 2015)
Poetry, Paperback, 144 pages
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Nominee - Poetry