Literary Prize · United States · Since 1980
American Book Award
Ishmael Reed started the Before Columbus Foundation with a $5,000 grant and a partner, the poet Victor Hernández Cruz. In 1980 it handed out its first American Book Awards at the West Side Community Center: no categories, no shortlist, no prize money, and no “best” anything. Every winner simply wins. The first year included Rudolfo Anaya’s Tortuga; later years brought The House on Mango Street, Beloved and James. In 2026, the forty-seventh time, the awards went to twelve books, from a biography of James Baldwin to a history of Black photographers. This page lists every winner since 2016, ten earlier winners still worth reading, and the story of a second, unrelated prize that used the same name for seven years.
By Lisanne Swart · 150 winners since 2016 · Before Columbus Foundation · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below. The year on each spine is the year it won.
Quick answer
The American Book Awards are given every year by the Before Columbus Foundation, a writers’ organisation in California. The 2026 awards, the forty-seventh, went to twelve books, among them Nicholas Boggs’s Baldwin: A Love Story and Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, with the Lifetime Achievement Award to Karen Tei Yamashita. There are no categories and no prize money, and each year usually has a dozen or more winners. Below: all 150 winning books since 2016, year by year, and the 10 earlier winners I would start with.
How This Page Chooses
The American Book Awards do not rank their winners, so neither does this page. The table further down lists every book that has won since 2016, year by year, as the foundation announced them.
The ten books on the shelf are my selection from the full history since 1980: winners that are still in print, still widely read, and spread across the decades, from the first year to 2025. Older winners are harder to verify year by year, so the table starts in 2016; the earlier books on the shelf were each checked against a source that names the year they won.
The Newest Winners: the 2026 American Book Awards
Twelve books won in 2026, announced at the end of July and presented on 26 September at the University of California, Berkeley. As always, there is no overall winner and no order; they are listed here alphabetically by author.
Winner 2026One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Omar El Akkad
Non-fiction by the Egyptian-born Canadian novelist of American War, about the war in Gaza and the gap between what Western liberal societies say and what they do.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Baldwin: A Love Story
Nicholas Boggs
A biography of James Baldwin told through the people he loved, from his youth in Harlem to his years in France and Turkey.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Beyond the Glittering World
Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, Kinsale Drake and Darcie Little Badger (eds.)
An anthology of Indigenous feminisms and futurisms.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Separation of Church and Hate
John Fugelsang
The comedian and broadcaster uses the Bible itself to argue against Christian nationalism.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always
Douglas Kearney
A book by the poet and performer Douglas Kearney.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Freedom Train
Cedric de Leon
A history of Black politics in the United States and of labour solidarity across racial lines.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026John Doe Chinaman
Beth Lew-Williams
A history of Chinese life under American racial law.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Variations in Blue
Adela Najarro
Poems.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings
Matthew Shipp
Writings on music by the free-jazz pianist Matthew Shipp.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Ars Poeticas
Juliana Spahr
A book by the poet Juliana Spahr, who also shared a publisher award in 2020 for Commune Editions.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope
Brandon M. Terry
A political theorist’s reading of the civil rights movement as a tragedy: what it hoped for and what it could not achieve.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
Winner 2026Reflections in Black
Deborah Willis
A history of Black photographers from 1840 to the present, in a new edition.
Amazon, Bookshop.org and more
10 American Book Award Winners Still Worth Reading
In the order they won, from the first awards in 1980 to 2025. The year in the label is the award year; the year on the author line is the year the book came out.
Tortuga
A teenage boy, paralysed after an accident, spends a year in a hospital for disabled children in the New Mexico desert. The other patients call him Tortuga, the turtle, because of the body cast he lies in. Anaya, best known for Bless Me, Ultima, drew on his own months in hospital after a swimming accident.
Why read itIt won in the very first year, 1980, and shows what the awards set out to do: honour a Chicano novel from a small press when the big prizes were looking elsewhere.
The House on Mango Street
Esperanza Cordero grows up in a Latino neighbourhood of Chicago and tells her life in forty-four short pieces, some only a paragraph long: the house that is not the one her parents promised, the women at the windows, the wish for a house of her own. It was published by Arte Público, a small Houston press.
Why read itYou can read it in an afternoon, and it has been on school reading lists for decades; this prize was one of the first to notice it.
Beloved
Cincinnati, 1873. Sethe escaped slavery eighteen years earlier, and her house is haunted by the daughter she killed rather than see her taken back. Then a young woman who calls herself Beloved walks out of the water and moves in.
Why read itProbably the best-known book ever to win the American Book Award; in the same year it also won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Round House
North Dakota, 1988. Thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts's mother is attacked near the round house on the Ojibwe reservation where they live, and because no one can say on whose land it happened, it is unclear who even has the power to prosecute. Joe and his friends set out to find the man.
Why read itA crime novel built on a real legal gap: who may try a crime committed on tribal land.
Homegoing
Two half-sisters are born in eighteenth-century West Africa, in what is now Ghana. One marries a British officer at Cape Coast Castle; the other is held in its dungeon and shipped to America. Each chapter follows the next generation of one line, down to the present day.
Why read itThree hundred years in one book, one life per chapter.
There There
Twelve Native people in Oakland, California, are heading for the same big powwow, each for their own reason, and some of them with a plan to rob it. Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.
Why read itTwelve voices converging on one afternoon, and the clearest picture on this list of Native life in an American city.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
A young man called Little Dog writes a letter to his mother, a Vietnamese nail-salon worker in Hartford, Connecticut, who cannot read it. He tells her about his grandmother, his first love and the family history neither of them speaks about.
Why read itA poet’s first novel, and one of the most widely read books on the recent winners’ list.
Crying in H Mart
Zauner, who records as Japanese Breakfast, writes about her Korean mother’s death from cancer and about cooking the Korean food her mother made, from YouTube videos, to keep hold of her.
Why read itA grief memoir told through food, and one of the few memoirs on the list that reached a mass audience.
Yellowface
June Hayward is a struggling white novelist. When her friend Athena Liu, a celebrated Chinese American writer, dies in an accident, June takes her unfinished manuscript and publishes it under the name Juniper Song.
Why read itA satire of publishing that won a prize run by writers.
James
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn retold by Jim, the man enslaved in it, who speaks one way in front of white people and another way among the enslaved. It follows him down the Mississippi.
Why read itIt won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and this award one after another.
Every American Book Award Winner Since 2016
150 books across eleven years, newest first. Open a year to see its winners; book titles link to the book. Under each year are the special awards, which go to people, editors and publishers rather than to a single book.
2026
47th awards · 12 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This | Omar El Akkad |
| Baldwin: A Love Story | Nicholas Boggs |
| Separation of Church and Hate | John Fugelsang |
| I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always | Douglas Kearney |
| Freedom Train | Cedric de Leon |
| John Doe Chinaman | Beth Lew-Williams |
| Variations in Blue | Adela Najarro |
| Beyond the Glittering World | Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, Kinsale Drake and Darcie Little Badger (eds.) |
| Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings | Matthew Shipp |
| Ars Poeticas | Juliana Spahr |
| Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope | Brandon M. Terry |
| Reflections in Black | Deborah Willis |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Karen Tei Yamashita. Anti-Censorship: Mitch Kaplan, the Miami bookseller, and Stephen Colbert. Editor/Publisher: Morgan Entrekin (Grove Atlantic) and Roger Malina (Leonardo).
2025
46th awards · 15 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Martyr! | Kaveh Akbar |
| Makeshift Altar | Amy M. Alvarez |
| Beautyland | Marie-Helene Bertino |
| James | Percival Everett |
| Malas | Marcela Fuentes |
| Imaginative Possibilities | Javier O. Huerta and Maceo Montoya |
| […] | Fady Joudah |
| Mice 1961 | Stacey Levine |
| The Unseen Truth | Sarah Lewis |
| By the Shore of Lake Michigan | Tomiko Matsumoto and Ryokuyō Matsumoto, ed. Nancy Matsumoto |
| The Small and the Mighty | Sharon McMahon |
| This Strange Eventful History | Claire Messud |
| mother | m.s. RedCherries |
| Colored Television | Danzy Senna |
| Between the Night and Its Music | A. B. Spellman, ed. Lauri Scheyer |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: John Edgar Wideman. Anti-Censorship: Joy Reid. Editor/Publisher: Erroll McDonald (Knopf). Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: Kevin Killian, Selected Amazon Reviews.
2024
45th awards · 17 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Independence | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
| The Lost Journals of Sacajewea | Debra Magpie Earling |
| Easily Slip Into Another World | Brent Hayes Edwards and Henry Threadgill |
| We Still Be | Paul S. Flores |
| Between Two Moons | Aisha Abdel Gawad |
| The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts | Gregg Hecimovich |
| Toussaint Louverture | Sakina Karimjee and Nic Watts |
| Yellowface | R. F. Kuang |
| Flesh & Spirit | Felipe Luciano |
| Orphan Bachelors | Fae Myenne Ng |
| Dark Days | Roger Reeves |
| Changing the Commons | John N. Roberts |
| Merze Tate | Barbara D. Savage |
| The 272 | Rachel L. Swarns |
| California Against the Sea | Rosanna Xia |
| Please Wait by the Coatroom | John Yau |
| From From | Monica Youn |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Jessica Hagedorn. Anti-Censorship: Asna Tabassum. Criticism: Mehdi Hasan (Zeteo) and Lynnée Denise, Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters.
2023
44th awards · 13 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| When We Were Birds | Ayanna Lloyd Banwo |
| High-Risk Homosexual | Edgar Gomez |
| Bad Mexicans | Kelly Lytle Hernández |
| The Ways | Everett Hoagland |
| Born of Lakes and Plains | Anne F. Hyde |
| The Haunting of Hajji Hotak | Jamil Jan Kochai |
| Saxophone Colossus | Aidan Levy |
| Sinking Bell | Bojan Louis |
| Nightcrawling | Leila Mottley |
| Come Back in September | Darryl Pinckney |
| Mummy Eaters | Sherry Shenoda |
| Solito | Javier Zamora |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Maxine Hong Kingston. Anti-Censorship: Neta C. Crawford, The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War. Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: bell hooks.
2022
43th awards · 13 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Reign of Terror | Spencer Ackerman |
| Songs in Ursa Major | Emma Brodie |
| Liner Notes for the Revolution | Daphne A. Brooks |
| What Storm, What Thunder | Myriam J. A. Chancy |
| The Diné Reader | Esther G. Belin, Jeff Berglund, Connie A. Jacobs and Anthony K. Webster (eds.) |
| Monkey Boy | Francisco Goldman |
| The Other Black Girl | Zakiya Dalila Harris |
| Economy Hall | Fatima Shaik |
| Quanundrum | Edwin Torres |
| Book of the Other | Truong Tran |
| Yellow Rain | Mai Der Vang |
| Mutiny | Phillip B. Williams |
| Crying in H Mart | Michelle Zauner |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Gayl Jones. Anti-Censorship: Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch). Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: Jessica E. Teague, Sound Recording Technology and American Literature. Editor/Publisher: Wave Books.
2021
42th awards · 13 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Homeland Elegies | Ayad Akhtar |
| These Ghosts Are Family | Maisy Card |
| Borderland Apocrypha | Anthony Cody |
| Desert Notebooks | Ben Ehrenreich |
| The Young Lords | Johanna Fernández |
| In the Lateness of the World | Carolyn Forché |
| Great Demon Kings | John Giorno |
| Minor Feelings | Cathy Park Hong |
| The Dawning of the Apocalypse | Gerald Horne |
| {#289-128} | Randall Horton |
| White Too Long | Robert P. Jones |
| Manhattan my ass, you’re in Oakland | Judy Juanita |
| Dunfords Travels Everywheres | William Melvin Kelley, illustrated by Aiki Kelley |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Maryemma Graham. Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: Shana Redmond, Everything Man. Anti-Censorship: Jacob Soboroff, Separated.
2020
41th awards · 13 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Felon | Reginald Dwayne Betts |
| Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff | Sara Borjas |
| Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman | Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye and Tate Swindell (eds.) |
| Crossfire | Staceyann Chin |
| Sabrina & Corina | Kali Fajardo-Anstine |
| The Race Card | Tara Fickle |
| America for Americans | Erika Lee |
| The Memory Police | Yoko Ogawa |
| Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers | Jake Skeets |
| They Called Us Enemy | George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott and Harmony Becker |
| On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous | Ocean Vuong |
| In West Mills | De’Shawn Charles Winslow |
| Solitary | Albert Woodfox with Leslie George |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Eleanor W. Traylor. Editor: Kofi Natambu (The Panopticon Review). Publisher: Commune Editions. Oral Literature: Amalia Leticia Ortiz. Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll (eds.), Appalachian Reckoning.
2019
40th awards · 12 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| John Okada | Frank Abe, Greg Robinson and Floyd Cheung (eds.) |
| Useful Phrases for Immigrants | May-lee Chai |
| The House of Early Sorrows | Louise DeSalvo |
| New Poets of Native Nations | Heid E. Erdrich (ed.) |
| Teeth Never Sleep | Ángel García |
| There There | Tommy Orange |
| Dancing in Blackness | Halifu Osumare |
| Unlikeness Is Us | Christopher Patton |
| Memento Park | Mark Sarvas |
| The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Jeffrey C. Stewart |
| Carbon Ideologies | William T. Vollmann |
| Ms. Marvel Vol. 9: Teenage Wasteland | G. Willow Wilson and Nico Leon |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Nathan Hare. Editor/Publisher: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Oral Literature: Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa).
2018
39th awards · 15 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| The Best We Could Do | Thi Bui |
| God’s Will for Monsters | Rachelle Cruz |
| The Man-Not | Tommy J. Curry |
| Heaven Is All Goodbyes | Tongo Eisen-Martin |
| Life of the Land | Dana Naone Hall |
| City of Inmates | Kelly Lytle Hernández |
| Altermundos | Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B. V. Olguín (eds.) |
| The Changeling | Victor LaValle |
| Currents | Bojan Louis |
| Tell Me How It Ends | Valeria Luiselli |
| The Dawn of Detroit | Tiya Miles |
| Nature Poem | Tommy Pico |
| Patriarchy Blues | Rena Priest |
| Shadowboxing | Joseph Rios |
| Beasts of Burden | Sunaura Taylor |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Sequoyah Guess. Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: Kellie Jones, South of Pico. Editor/Publisher: Charles F. Harris. Anti-Censorship: Rob Rogers. Oral Literature: Heroes Are Gang Leaders.
2017
38th awards · 16 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Adnan’s Story | Rabia Chaudry |
| Invisible Men | Flores A. Forbes |
| Homegoing | Yaa Gyasi |
| Passings | Holly Hughes |
| Him, Me, Muhammad Ali | Randa Jarrar |
| The Book of Harlan | Bernice L. McFadden |
| Sounding Thunder | Brian D. McInnes |
| Blood at the Root | Patrick Phillips |
| Race and the Totalitarian Century | Vaughn Rasberry |
| Year of the Rat | Marc Anthony Richardson |
| Green Island | Shawna Yang Ryan |
| See You in the Streets | Ruth Sergel |
| Look | Solmaz Sharif |
| Memory Foam | Adam Soldofsky |
| The Mexican Flyboy | Alfredo Véa |
| Seeing the Light | Dean Wong |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Nancy Mercado. Editor/Publisher: Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative (Ammiel Alcalay, general editor).
2016
37th awards · 11 books
| Book | Author |
|---|---|
| Manifestation Wolverine | Ray Young Bear |
| Curious Land | Susan Muaddi Darraj |
| Tributaries | Laura Da’ |
| We Too Sing America | Deepa Iyer |
| Loving Day | Mat Johnson |
| Counternarratives | John Keene |
| F.B. Eyes | William J. Maxwell |
| Trace | Lauret Savoy |
| The American Slave Coast | Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette |
| Return to Arroyo Grande | Jesús Salvador Treviño |
| Tomorrow’s Battlefield | Nick Turse |
Special awards: Lifetime Achievement: Louise Meriwether. Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism: Lyra Monteiro and Nancy Isenberg. Andrew Hope Award: Chiitaanibah Johnson.
Two Prizes Called the American Book Award
In 1980, the same year the Before Columbus Foundation gave its first awards, the publishers behind the National Book Awards renamed their prize the American Book Awards and rebuilt it on the model of the Oscars, with dozens of prizes in more than a dozen categories. The experiment lasted until 1987, when the old name came back; the prize is now run by the National Book Foundation.
The two prizes have nothing to do with each other, but the overlap still causes confusion. Don DeLillo’s White Noise, for example, is often described as a winner of the American Book Award, which it is: the 1985 award for fiction, under the renamed National Book Awards, not the Before Columbus prize. For that line of winners see my page on every National Book Award winner.
The Before Columbus Foundation describes itself as founded in 1976, a nonprofit for contemporary multicultural American literature; its board decided in 1978 to start a book award, and the first ceremony followed in 1980. Ishmael Reed has written that he started the foundation with a grant from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and chose the poet Victor Hernández Cruz as his partner. The rules have barely changed since: a panel of writers, editors and publishers picks the winners, there is no entry fee and no cash prize, and any book published in the previous year can be sent in.
The American Book Awards in short
- Presented by
- The Before Columbus Foundation, a writers’ nonprofit founded in 1976
- First awards
- 1980, at the West Side Community Center
- Known for
- Honouring American writers of every background, including many published by small and university presses
- Categories
- None: no shortlist, no nominees, no single “best” book
- Prize money
- None, and no fee to enter
- Chosen by
- A panel of writers, editors and publishers
- Eligible
- Books published in the previous calendar year
- Ceremony
- Usually in the autumn in the San Francisco Bay Area; UC Berkeley in 2025 and 2026
Frequently asked questions about the American Book Award
What is the American Book Award?
An annual literary award given by the Before Columbus Foundation, a writers’ nonprofit in California, since 1980. It honours outstanding books by American writers of every background, with no categories, no shortlist and no prize money; each year a dozen or more books win.
Who won the American Book Award in 2026?
Twelve books won the 47th American Book Awards in 2026, among them Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope by Brandon M. Terry and Reflections in Black by Deborah Willis. Karen Tei Yamashita received the Lifetime Achievement Award, and Stephen Colbert and Mitch Kaplan the Anti-Censorship Award. The awards were presented on 26 September 2026 at UC Berkeley.
Who won the American Book Award in 2025?
Fifteen books won in 2025, including James by Percival Everett, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, Colored Television by Danzy Senna and This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud. John Edgar Wideman received the Lifetime Achievement Award and Joy Reid the Anti-Censorship Award.
Is the American Book Award the same as the National Book Award?
No. The American Book Awards of the Before Columbus Foundation are a separate prize. The confusion comes from 1980 to 1986, when the National Book Awards were themselves renamed the American Book Awards; the old name returned in 1987. Don DeLillo’s White Noise, for example, won that renamed prize in 1985, not the Before Columbus award.
How are American Book Award winners chosen?
By a panel of writers, editors and publishers, which the foundation says reflects the diversity of American literary culture. There are no nominees and no categories, so the panel simply names the books it considers outstanding, and the number of winners changes from year to year.
Does the American Book Award come with prize money?
No. The foundation says the awards offer no cash prize and ask nothing of authors or publishers. There is also no entry fee.
How do you submit a book for the American Book Award?
Publishers or authors send two copies of a book published in the previous calendar year to the Before Columbus Foundation. There is no fee; the foundation’s website gives the current address.
Which American Book Award winners should I read first?
Start with Beloved by Toni Morrison (winner 1988), The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (1985) or James by Percival Everett (2025). The ten winners on this page cover the award from its first year to 2025.
Footnotes
- Our Story — Before Columbus Foundation
- Contact and submissions — Before Columbus Foundation
- American Book Awards Winners Announced (2026) — Kirkus Reviews
- Stephen Colbert wins an anti-censorship award (2026) — AP via WCAX
- Joy Reid and Percival Everett among winners of the 46th annual American Book Awards — PBS NewsHour, 2025
- Erroll McDonald and Penguin Random House authors to be honored (2025) — Penguin Random House
- Recent winners, 2025 — Poets & Writers
- Recent winners, 2024 — Poets & Writers
- 2024 special awards — AP via Medicine Hat News
- 2023 American Book Awards press release (via UC Riverside)
- 2022 winners — AP via InfoNews
- The Diné Reader receives a 2022 American Book Award — University of Arizona Press
- Akhtar, Ehrenreich among winners of American Book Awards (2021) — AP via WSLS
- Here are the winners of the 2020 American Book Awards — Literary Hub
- American Book Awards press release 2019 — Before Columbus Foundation (via UCLA)
- American Book Awards press release 2018 — Before Columbus Foundation
- 2017 winners — AALBC
- 37th Annual American Book Awards (2016) — LitSeen
- American Book Award winners, 1985 and 1988 — AALBC
- Rudolfo Anaya — Encyclopedia.com
- Louise Erdrich wins American Book Award (2013) — AP via Ahram Online
- Ishmael Reed on the Before Columbus Foundation — The Nation, 2026
- National Book Awards look to raise profile — NPR, 2013
Each year’s list was checked against an announcement that names that year. The 2026 winners were announced on 29 July 2026 (AP); Kirkus reported them on 12 August. Wikipedia’s year headings for this prize are offset and were used only as a cross-check. Winners last verified 7 October 2026.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers.”
— Before Columbus Foundation, American Book Awards press release
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