The 91st Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards celebrate four debut works examining race from a global perspective. Organizers of the Cleveland-based prize announced the winners Wednesday in the fiction, nonfiction, memoir and poetry categories, which celebrate diversity.
When reflecting on this year’s field of 11 nominees, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Executive Director Kortney Morrow said this year’s books share a common thread: migration and belonging.
“The very core of this nation is rooted, to some degree, in this idea of migration,” she said. “All of the titles, whether it's rooted in the Harlem Renaissance … or this idea of belonging in the American South, migration across lines and borders is something that is present in all of the texts.”
Sarah Aziza’s “The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders” was selected in the memoir category, about the author’s battle with an eating disorder, which eventually leads to questions about her Palestinian roots.
In poetry, Gbenga Adesina’s meditation on migration and voyages, “Death Does Not End at the Sea,” centers on the loss of his father.
Carrie R. Moore’s “Make Your Way Home,” consisting of short stories on belonging and climate migration in the American South, won the fiction prize.
The nonfiction works were “vetted by some of the most critically acclaimed historians” according to Morrow.
“These are titles we should all be paying attention to, not only for their stories, but their craft and their depth of research,” she said during a March interview about the finalists.
The 2026 nonfiction winner is Bench Ansfield’s “Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City” about how arson destroyed poor, urban centers in the 1970s.
Historian Nell Irvin Painter receives the 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on race and the American experience. Her books include "The History of White People" and biographies of Hosea Hudson and Sojourner Truth.
Last year marked a turning point for the awards as Morrow came aboard after several years as a consultant. The monetary prize tripled at that time to $30,000, a new memoir category was added and, for the first time, finalists were named ahead of the winners.
The 2026 award ceremony is Sept. 18 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center during Cleveland Book Week.
