Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominees and 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 2020
Winner - Debut Fiction
Winner - Fiction
A Tall History of Sugar
by Curdella Forbes
Akashic Books (Oct 01, 2019)
Fiction, Hardcover, 368 pages
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Winner - Nonfiction
Solitary
by Albert Woodfox
List Price: $18.00Grove Press (Dec 03, 2019)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 448 pages
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Winner - Poetry
Exiles of Eden
by Ladan Osman
List Price: $16.95Coffee House Press (May 07, 2019)
Poetry, Paperback, 128 pages
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Finalist - Fiction
Gingerbread: A Novel
by Helen Oyeyemi
List Price: $27.00Riverhead Books (Mar 05, 2019)
Fiction, Hardcover, 272 pages
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Finalist - Fiction
The World Doesn’t Require You: Stories
by Rion Amilcar Scott
List Price: $25.95Liveright Publishing Corporation (Aug 20, 2019)
Fiction, Hardcover, 384 pages
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Finalist - Nonfiction
Think Black
by Clyde W. Ford
List Price: $25.99Amistad (Sep 17, 2019)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 304 pages
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Finalist - Nonfiction
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
by Saidiya Hartman
List Price: $17.95W. W. Norton & Company (Jan 14, 2020)
Nonfiction, Paperback, 464 pages
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Finalist - Poetry
& More Black
by t’ai freedom ford
Augury Books (Jul 01, 2019)
Poetry, Paperback, 104 pages
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Finalist - Poetry
Syncope
by Asiya Wadud
List Price: $17.00Ugly Duckling Presse (Sep 01, 2019)
Poetry, Paperback, 80 pages
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Read Our Review of Syncope
Nominee - Debut Fiction
Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar
by Ron A. Austin
List Price: $18.00Southeast Missouri State University Press (Oct 01, 2019)
Fiction, Paperback, 172 pages
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Nominee - Debut Fiction
As a River
by Sion Dayson
List Price: $17.99Jaded Ibis Press (Sep 03, 2019)
Fiction, Paperback, 218 pages
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Nominee - Fiction
The Revisioners
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
List Price: $25.00Counterpoint (Nov 05, 2019)
Fiction, Hardcover, 288 pages
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Nominee - Fiction
Patsy
by Nicole Dennis-Benn
List Price: $26.95Liveright Publishing Corporation (Jun 04, 2019)
Fiction, Hardcover, 432 pages
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Nominee - Nonfiction
Nominee - Nonfiction
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays
by Damon Young
List Price: $27.99Ecco (Mar 26, 2019)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 320 pages
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Nominee - Nonfiction
We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood
by Dani McClain
List Price: $26.00Bold Type Books (Apr 02, 2019)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 272 pages
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Nominee - Poetry
Library of Small Catastrophes
by Alison C. Rollins
Copper Canyon Press (Apr 23, 2019)
Poetry, Paperback, 96 pages
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Nominee - Poetry
1919
by Eve L. Ewing
List Price: $36.00Haymarket Books (Jun 04, 2019)
Poetry, Hardcover, 96 pages
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Nominee - Poetry
Night Angler
by Geffrey Davis
List Price: $17.00BOA Editions (Apr 30, 2019)
Poetry, Paperback, 112 pages
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