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's namesakes are the 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