Winners were announced for the 2025 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation, honoring "literature that confronts racism and celebrates diversity," and celebrating its 90th anniversary. The winners:
Fiction: Colored Television by Danzy Senna
Nonfiction: The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs, edited by Jonathan D.S. Schroeder
Memoir: Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (the first graphic memoir to win in the award's history
Poetry: Yard Show by Janice Harrington
Lifetime Achievement Award: Yusef Komunyakaa
"For 90 years, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have championed fearless, groundbreaking literature that challenges the status quo, ignites dialogue, and shapes a more just and inclusive world," said Lillian Kuri, president and CEO of the Cleveland Foundation. "This year's winners unearth buried histories, redefine cultural narratives, and demand our attention--at a moment when these voices are more vital than ever."
---
The shortlist has been selected for the £25,000 (about $33,045) Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which "celebrates quality, innovation and ambition of writing," and is open to books first published in the previous year in the U.K., Ireland, or the Commonwealth. The majority of the story must have taken place at least 60 years ago. The winner will be named June 12. Each shortlisted author is awarded £1,500 (about $1,980). For more about the shortlisted titles, click here.
The shortlist:
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
The Mare by Angharad Hampshire
The Book of Days by Francesca Kay
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
This year's judges, chaired by Katie Grant, said: "From the escapades of young combatants in the Peloponnesian war in Sicily in the 5th century BC to a tender story of families isolated at home in the great British winter freeze of 1962/3, the shortlisted novels for this year's Walter Scott Prize paint a wide literary canvas of richness and subtlety. They are a celebration of storytelling, encompassing a tale of revenge and reconciliation in post-occupation Netherlands, a picture of family claustrophobia in Tudor England, an exhilarating cross-country adventure through the Wild West, and a revelatory exploration of evil--under a thick social disguise--in 1950s New York. Together the books illustrate the founding principles of the prize, bringing stories set in the past into our own time, through fine writing that is infused with ambition and originality to produce novels guaranteed to live long in the memory."