2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Announce Winners, Marking Historic Firsts

The prestigious literary prize celebrates diverse voices with a groundbreaking graphic memoir win and honors Yusef Komunyakaa with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

• The winners of the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have been announced, recognizing excellence in literature addressing race and diversity.
• Yusef Komunyakaa, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to literature.
• For the first time in the award's 90-year history, a graphic memoir, 'Feeding Ghosts' by Tessa Hulls, has been honored in the memoir category.
• Other winners include Danzy Senna for fiction ('Colored Television'), John Swanson Jacobs for nonfiction ('The United States Governed By Six Hundred Thousand Despots'), and Janice Harrington for poetry ('Yard Show').
• The awards ceremony is scheduled for September 19, 2025, in Cleveland, continuing the legacy of the nation’s only juried prize dedicated to literature focused on race and diversity.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer Literary Hub