Hurston-Wright Legacy Award

The Hurston-Wright Legacy Award is a literary award given by the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award is the first national award given to black American writers. The award namesakes are two of the most influential black authors, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.

2015 winners and finalists

Fiction

• The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani
• Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah
• An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
• The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
• The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed
• Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique

Nonfiction

• Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen
• This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
• Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow
• Malcolm X at Oxford Union by Saladin Ambar
• Losing Our Way by Bob Herbert
• Not For Everyday Use by Elizabeth Nunez

Poetry

• Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis
• We Don't Know Any Gangsters by Brian Gilmore
• Digest by Gregory Pardlo
• The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon by Willie Perdomo
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• King Me by Roger Reeves

2010 winners and finalists

Fiction

• I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel by Percival Everett
• Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
• Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

Nonfiction

• Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin Kelley
• Freedom by Any Means: True Stories of Cunning and Courage on the Underground Railroad by Betty DeRamus
• Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson by Wil Haygood

Poetry

• Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems by Haki R. Madhubuti
• Sonata Mulattica: Poems by Rita Dove

2009 winners and finalists

Fiction

• Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
• Holding Pattern: Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen
• Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward

Nonfiction

• Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid by Frank B. Wilderson
• The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings

Poetry

• The Headless Saints by Myronn Hardy

2008 winners and finalists

Fiction

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
• The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse Condé

Nonfiction

• Brother, I'm Dying by Edwige Danticat
• Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America by Sylviane A. Diouf
• On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century by Sherrilyn Ifill

Debut Fiction

• She's Gone by Kwame Dawes
• Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard
• Them by Nathan McCall

Poetry

• Bouquet of Hungers by Kyle G. Dargan

2007 winners and finalists

Fiction

• All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones
• Dominion: A Novel by Calvin Baker
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nonfiction

• Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari Maathai
• The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora by Louis Chude-Sokei
• The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging by Kym Ragusa

Debut Fiction

• Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna

Poetry

• Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith

2006 winners and finalists

Fiction

• My Jim: A Novel by Nancy Rawles
• Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham
• The Untelling by Tayari Jones

Nonfiction

• Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin by John Hope Franklin
• Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle
• Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists by Lisa E. Farrington

Debut Fiction

• Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas

Contemporary Fiction

• The Long Mile: The Shango Mysteries by Clyde W. Ford

2005 winners and finalists

Fiction

• Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? by Maryse Condé
• The Dew Breaker by Edwige Danticat
• The Madonna of Excelsior by Zakes Mda

Nonfiction

• Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis DeVeaux
• The End of Blackness by Debra J. Dickerson
• A Continent for the Taking by Howard French

Debut Fiction

• GraceLand by Chris Abani

Contemporary Fiction

• A Woman's Worth by Tracy Price-Thompson

2004 winners and finalists

Fiction

• Hunting in Harlem by Mat Johnson
• The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke
• A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips

Nonfiction

• In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood
• Mandela, Mobutu and Me by Lynne Duke
• Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity by E. Patrick Johnson

Debut Fiction

• Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• A Place Between Stations by Stephanie Allen
• Knee-Deep in Wonder by April Reynolds

External links

• Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, official website