Finalists for the 91st Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards announced Tuesday encompass 11 authors from around the globe examining race. The Cleveland-based prize recognizes fiction and nonfiction books, memoirs and poetry collections that celebrate diversity.
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Executive Director Kortney Morrow said this year there’s even diversity among the finalists, with debuts and mid-career works alongside books by authors with lengthy bibliographies. All of them seem to share a common thread: migration and belonging.
“The very core of this nation is rooted, to some degree, in this idea of migration,” she said. “Across the globe, it’s something we’ve been grappling with since the beginning of time. All of the titles, whether it’s rooted in the Harlem Renaissance … or this idea of belonging in the American South, migration across lines and borders is something that is present in all of the texts.”
Two memoirs are among the finalists. Sarah Aziza’s “The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders” finds the author battling an eating disorder which eventually leads to questions about her Palestinian roots. “Mother Mary Comes to Me” is Arundhati Roy’s grieving of her mother’s death while exploring their contentious relationship.
Three poetry collections are also in the mix this year.
“Becoming Ghost” by Cathy Linh Che weaves a narrative about the author’s parents fleeing Vietnam and eventually becoming extras in the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now.” Gbenga Adesina’s meditation on migration and voyages, “Death Does Not End at the Sea,” centers on the loss of his father. National Book Award winner Martín Espada offers “Jailbreak of Sparrows,” poems that dive into Puerto Rican culture and history.
Two collections and a novel make up this year’s fiction slate.
“Make Your Way Home,” the debut by Carrie R. Moore, consists of short stories on belonging and climate migration in the American South. “Guatemalan Rhapsody” by Jared Lemus is a collection about Guatemala’s working-class and their reckoning with topics such as masculinity. The full-length “Flashlight” by Susan Choi is described by Morrow as “a suspenseful examination” of a family and its history across the United States, Korea and Japan.
The final three works, vying for the nonfiction prize, “have been vetted by some of the most critically acclaimed historians” according to Morrow.
“These are titles we should all be paying attention to, not only for their stories, but their craft and their depth of research,” she said.
“Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance” by A’Lelia Bundles is a biography of the woman whose elaborate parties earned her the nickname “joy goddess” by Langston Hughes. Bench Ansfield’s “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City” examines how arson destroyed poor, urban centers in the 1970s. “The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide” by Howard W. French is about the first leader of independent Ghana and his impact on civil rights leaders in the U.S.
A continuing evolution
Last year marked a turning point for the awards as Morrow came aboard after several years as a consultant. The monetary prize also tripled, to $30,000, while they added a memoir category and also released the names of the finalists for the first time.
“I think the jury wanted a chance to be able to honor more people,” Morrow said in 2025.
The 2026 jury, again led by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, included critically acclaimed author Luis Alberto Urrea and former AWBA winners Peter Ho Davies, Charles King and Tiya Miles. The winners will be announced April 15 followed by an award ceremony at the Maltz Performing Arts Center on September 18 during Cleveland Book Week.
