Winners were announced for the 2026 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation and "dedicated to literature that contributes to our understanding of race and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures." This year's winners include:
Fiction: Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore
Nonfiction: Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City by Bench Ansfield
Memoir: The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza
Poetry: Death Does Not End at the Sea by Gbenga Adesina
Lifetime Achievement Award: Nell Irvin Painter
"It is never easy to choose a single work in each genre from so many excellent books published each year," said jury chair Natasha Trethewey. "That each of this year's winners is a debut makes the honor all the more profound--new voices, already essential. These books matter because they deepen our understanding, enlarge our empathy, and remind us of literature's power to illuminate who we are."
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The shortlist has been selected for the £25,000 (about $33,830) 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 books must have been written in English and should be largely set more than 60 years ago. The winner will be named June 12. Each shortlisted author is awarded £1,500 (about $2,030). The shortlisted titles are:
The Pretender by Jo Harkin
The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly
Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
The judges said: "The five shortlisted novels for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize probe intimate lives lived in both small and big settings. Readers will hear voices usually unheard but which, once heard, won't be forgotten. The shortlist choice is always difficult, but our authors each reveal the hidden, and in doing so offer new insights into our own times as well as the times in which their novels are set. Above all, our five authors are storytellers, so if you like a good story, the 2026 Walter Scott Prize shortlist is one you won't want to miss."