Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominees and Winning Books

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year

This is a tender, deeply perceptive tale of what kin owes kin, and how we might work to mend old wounds together. Elle

In this stunning debut novel, four generations of complex Black women contend with motherhood and daughterhood, generational trauma, and the deeply ingrained tensions and wounds that divide them as they redefine happiness and healing for themselves.

Erudite Evelyn, her cynical daughter Charlotte, and Charlotte s optimistic daughter Corinna see the world very differently. Though they love each other deeply, it s no wonder that their personalities often clash. But their conflicts go deeper than run-of-the-mill disagreements. Here, there is deep, dark resentment for past and present hurt.

When Corinna gives birth to her own daughter, Camille, the beautiful, intelligent little girl offers this trio of mothers something they all need: hope, joy, and an opportunity to reconcile. They decide to work together to raise their collective daughter with the tenderness and empathy they missed in their own relationships. Yet despite their best intentions, they cannot agree on what that means.

After Camille eventually leaves her mother and grandmother in rural Tennessee for a more cosmopolitan life in Washington, DC with her great-grandmother, it s unclear whether this complex and self-contained girl will thrive or be overwhelmed by the fears and dreams of three generations she carries. As she grows into a gutsy young woman, Camille must decide for herself what happiness will look like.

In masterful, elegant prose, debut novelist Sarai Johnson has created a rich and moving portrait of Black women s lives today.

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim s point of view. - From the "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily), Pulitzer Prize Finalist, and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin ), Jim s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

A bold, innovative biography that offers a new understanding of the life, work, and enduring impact of Audre Lorde.

We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde s teachings on "the creative power of difference" may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today.

Lorde s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde s quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.

In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde s manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth.

Winner of the 2025 Zora Award for Nonfiction

“Beautiful… A gift to ourselves and to the world.”— Mikki Kendall, New York Times bestselling author of Hood Feminism

From gender adviser to the UN Catherine Joy White comes This Thread of Gold, a lyrical celebration of the history of Black women who challenged stereotypes through film, politics, activism, and beyond.

This immersive and empowering read blends history, reporting, and personal stories to weave a gorgeous tapestry from the resilience of Black women. As White writes, “Black women are not victims. Black women are alchemists, spinning gold from a life of hardship…. This book is dedicated solely to Black women surviving, thriving, and glowing.”

White’s book features revolutionary women from across time and space, liberating them from reductive stereotypes like “the strong Black woman,” and allowing space for emotional nuance, individual motivation, and richness of expression. White offers fresh insights into the work of Beyoncé and Nina Simone, Shirley Chisholm and Meghan Markle, as well as the work of those who resisted in secret—in kitchens, in churches, and through trusted networks. By weaving these women together, White reveals new ways to understand Black womanhood and is sure to inspire new generations of readers.

An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.

Carl Phillips s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that s based on human memory. If the poet s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on vulnerability: the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn t, does that make our belief true?

In Scattered Snows, to the North, Phillips looks through the window of the past in order to understand the essential sameness of the human condition Tears / were tears, mistakes were made and regretted or not regretted, and it mattered until it didn t, the way people live until they don t. And there was also joy. And beauty. Yet the world s still / so beautiful Sometimes // it is And it was enough. And it still can be.

It s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.

But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she s never met, key elements of Pop s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she s learned of the past change her future?

A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us and heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.

In Rabata, everyone has secrets—especially since the arrival of the white American missionaries.

Twenty-year-old Jummai is a beautiful and unassuming house girl whose dreams of escaping her home life are disrupted when an unexpected pregnancy forces her to hide her lover’s identity. Tebeya, an ambitious Dublin-educated doctor, has left prestigious opportunities abroad to return to the small town of her birth, and discovers a painful betrayal when she strives to take control of the mission clinic. Zanya is a young translator, enticed by promises of progress, who comes to Rabata to escape a bitter past and finds himself embroiled in a fight against the American reverend for the heart of the church and town.

United by their yearning for change, all three must make difficult decisions that threaten the fragile relationships of the Rabata they know. As tensions mount and hypocrisies are unveiled, the people of Rabata are faced with a question that will transform their town forever: Let the Americans stay, or make them go?

Set against the backdrop of 1970s Nigeria teetering between post-colonial dependency and self-rule, Before the Mango Ripens examines the enduring themes of faith, disillusionment, and the search for belonging. Both epic and intimate, Afabwaje Kurian’s debut announces a brilliant new talent for readers of Imbolo Mbue and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

For fans of The Lottery and The Hunger Games, this novel set in a small town with a sinister tradition is chilling in the best possible way.

Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home. Osira, a 45-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America stuck in the past and governed by a tradition of ominous rituals. Considered blessed, Osira s luck changes when her children run off, she comes second-to-last in the running of the widows and her father flees when his name is called in the annual moving-on ceremony. Forced into a test of allegiance, Osira finds herself transported back in time then into another realm where she must answer for crimes committed by Curdle Creek. Exile forces her to jump realms again, landing Osira even farther away from home in rural England. Safe, as long as she sticks to the rules, she quickly learns there are consequences for every kindness. Will another jump lead Osira anywhere but back home?

Curdle Creek is a unique, inventive novel exploring themes of home, belonging, motherhood, and what we inherit from society. This American gothic offers a mash-up of the surreal and literary horror that will appeal to fans of Ring Shout, The Underground Railroad and Lovecraft Country. Battle-Felton s fever-dream of a tale is strange, layered, and quite unlike anything else.

One of Literary Hub s most anticipated books of 2024

A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia and sought to transform their lives.

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?

These questions animate Aaron Robertson s exploration of Black Americans efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit the city where he was born, and where one of the country s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine s chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continue today.

Alongside the Shrine s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism.

The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces both ideological and physical where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.

Dionne Brand explores English and American literature, and the colonial aesthetic that shaped her sense of self and the world, of what was possible and what was not.

Coloniality constructs outsides and insides worlds to be chosen, disturbed, interpreted, and navigated in order to live something like a real self.

In Salvage, the internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Dionne Brand offers a bracing account of reading, life, and what remains in the wreck of empire. Uniquely and powerfully blending criticism and autobiography as artifact, Brand explores her encounters with colonial, imperialist, and racist tropes in famous and familiar books, looking particularly at the extraordinary implications and modern-day reverberations of stories such as Robinson Crusoe and Mansfield Park; the ways that practices of reading and writing are shaped by those narrative structures; and the challenges of writing a narrative of Black life that attends to its own expression and consciousness.

Making and remaking the self in relation to these dominant cultural narratives, Brand learned to read the literature of two empires, the British and the American, in an anti-colonial light in order to survive, in order to live.

The scene is the act of reading. The book, another kind of forensics. A forensics of the literary substance of which the author is made and must recover from, and if not recover, then piece together as artifact. Much more than autobiography or a work of literary criticism, Salvage is gripping, witty, revelatory, and essential reading by one of our most powerful and brilliant writers.

Winner: A Michigan Notable Book!
Finalist: The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards!

A testament to the tenacious spirit embodied in Detroit culture and history, this account reveals how numbers gambling, initially an illegal enterprise, became a community resource and institution of solidarity for Black communities through times of racial disenfranchisement and labor instability. Author Felicia B. George sheds light on the lives of Detroit’s numbers operators many self-made entrepreneurs who overcame poverty and navigated the pitfalls of racism and capitalism by both legal and illegal means. Illegal lottery operators and their families and employees were often exposed to precarity and other adverse conditions, and they profited from their neighbors’ hope to make it through another day. Despite scandal and exploitation, these operators and their families also became important members of the community, providing steady employment and financial support for local businesses.

This book provides a glimpse into the rich culture and history of Detroit’s Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods, linking the growing gambling scene there with key characters and moments in local history, including Joe Louis’s rise to fame and the recall of a mayor backed by the Ku Klux Klan. In succinct and engrossing chapters, George explores issues of community, race, politics, and the scandals that sprang up along the way, discovering how "playing the numbers" grew from a state-proclaimed crime to an encouraged legal activity.

Longlisted for the 2024 Kirkus Non-Fiction Prize.

A transformative memoir that reimagines the conventions of love and posits a radical vision for healing.

In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in America.

Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career on writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world.

With courage, vulnerability, and a remarkable expansiveness of spirit—not to mention a thrilling, and unrivaled, storytelling verve—Another Word for Love makes an irresistible case for life, healing, the fullness of our humanity, and, of course, love. It could be called a theory of life itself—a theory of being that will leave you open to the wonder of the world.

Sweeping from the eighteenth century to futurist fabulations, Black Bell harmonizes poetry with performance art practices in an investigation of fugitivity.

Inspired by the nineteenth century image of an enslaved woman wearing iron horns and bells, Alison C. Rollins’s Black Bell continues an exploration of cataloging individual experience and collective memory. As Rollins sets out to resuscitate and embody the archive, we see a chorus of historical figures like Eliza Harris, Henry “Box” Brown, and Lear Green; readers can listen in as Phillis Wheatley takes a Turing test or venture through Dante’s Inferno remixed with Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers.

Poems travel across time and space, between the eighteenth century and futuristic fabulations, vibrating with fugitive frequencies, sounds of survival, and nerve-wracking notes tuned toward love and liberation. Black Bell navigates what it means to be both invisible and spectacle, hidden and on display, allowing lyric language to become the material for fashioning wearable sculptures akin to Nick Cave’s “soundsuits.”

Integrating performance art practices, metalwork, and sonic elements, Black Bell becomes a multimedia meditation on freedom seeking, furthering the possibilities of both the page and the canvas of the poet’s body.

Tender poetry chronicling a son’s relationship with his mother through her battle with cancer and his move from his homeland of Nigeria to the United States.

Winner of the 2023 CAAPP Book Prize from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and Autumn House Press, Okwudili Nebeolisa’s debut poetry collection serves as an intimate exploration of the relationship between a Nigerian mother and son. Throughout the book, Nebeolisa navigates the guilt of starting a new life in the United States, far away from his home country and from his mother, who is battling cancer.

Depicting tender moments between mother and son, Terminal Maladies highlights how the poet and his family shoulder the responsibility of caregiving together and how Nebeolisa works to bridge the physical and emotional distance between them. He reflects on the reasons behind his Nigerian mother’s withholding, questioning her need to act bravely alongside his own assumed role as her protector.