American Book Awards
literary award in the United States
The American Book Awards are an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers."
The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit Before Columbus Foundation, which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980. The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. Previous winners include novelists, social scientists, philosophers, poets, and historians such as Dana Gioia, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, MacKenzie Bezos, Isabel Allende, bell hooks, Don DeLillo, Derrick Bell, Robin Kelley, Joy Harjo and Tommy J. Curry.
National Book Awards
In 1980, the unrelated National Book Awards was renamed American Book Awards. In 1987 it was renamed back to National Book Awards. Other than having the same name during this seven-year period, the two awards have no relation.
Recipients
1980s
1980
Douglas Woolf for Future Preconditional: A Collection
Edward Dorn for Hello, La Jolla
Jayne Cortez for Mouth on Paper
Leslie Marmon Silko for Ceremony
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for Random Possession
Milton Murayama for All I Asking for Is My Body
Quincy Troupe for Snake Back Solos
Rudolfo Anaya for Tortuga, a novel
1981
Alta for Shameless Hussy
Alan Chong Lau for Songs for Jadina
Bienvenido N. Santos for Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories
Helen Adam for Turn Again to Me & Other Poems
Lionel Mitchell for Traveling Light
Miguel Algarín for On Call
Nicholasa Mohr for Felita
Peter Blue Cloud for Back Then Tomorrow
Robert Kelly for The Time of Voice: Poems 1994–1996
Rose Drachler for The Choice
Susan Howe for The Liberties
Toni Cade Bambara for The Salt Eaters
1982
Al Young for Bodies and Soul
Duane Niatum for Songs for the Harvester of Dreams: Poems
E. L. Mayo for Collected Poems E L Mayo
Frank Chin for The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon
Hilton Obenzinger for This Passover or the next, I will never be in Jerusalem
Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, Judy Yung for Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940
Jerome Rothenberg for Pre-Faces and Other Writings
Joyce Carol Thomas for Marked by Fire
Leroy Quintana for Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets
Lorna Dee Cervantes for Emplumada
Ronald Phillip Tanaka for The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry
Russell Banks for Book of Jamaica
Tato Laviera for Enclave
1983
Barbara Christian for Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976
Cecilia Liang for Chinese Folk Poetry
Evangelina Vigil-Piñón for Thirty: An' Seen a Lot
Harriet Rohmer for Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento
James D. Houston for Californians: Searching for the Golden State
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn for Pet food & tropical apparitions
John A. Williams for Click Song, a novel
Joy Kogawa for Obasan
Judy Grahn for The Queen of Wands: Poetry
Nash Candelaria for Not by the Sword
Peter Guralnick for Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians
Seán Ó Tuama for An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred: Poems of the Dispossessed
1984
Cecil Brown for Days Without Weather
Gary Snyder for Axe Handles: Poems
Howard Schwartz, Mark Podwal for The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman
Imamu Amiri Baraka for Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men
Jesús Colón for A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches
Joseph Bruchac for Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets
Maurice Kenny for The Mama Poems
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for The heat bird
Miné Okubo for Citizen 13660
Paule Marshall for Praisesong for the Widow
Ruthanne Lum McCunn, You-shan Tang, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung for Pie-Biter
Thomas McGrath for Echoes inside the labyrinth
Venkatesh Kulkarni for Naked in Deccan
William J. Kennedy for O Albany!
1985
Angela Jackson for Solo in the Box Car Third Floor E
Arnold Genthe, John Kuo Wei Tchen for Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown
Colleen J. McElroy for Queen of the Ebony Isles
Gary Soto for Living Up The Street
Peter Irons for Justice at War
Keiho Soga, Taisanboku Mori, Sojin Takei, Muin Ozaki for Poets Behind Barbed Wire
Louise Erdrich for Love Medicine, a novel
Maureen Owen for Amelia Earhart
May Sarton for At Seventy: A Journal
Robert Edward Duncan for Ground Work: Before the War
Ron Jones for Say Ray
Sandra Cisneros for The House on Mango Street
Sonia Sanchez for Homegirls and Handgrenades
Julia Vinograd for The Book of Jerusalem
William Oandasan for Round Valley Songs
1986
Anna Lee Walters for The Sun Is Not Merciful: Short Stories
Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa for This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
Helen Barolini for The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writing by Italian American Women
Jeff Hannusch for I Hear You Knockin : The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues
Linda Hogan for Seeing Through the Sun
Miguel Algarín for Time's Now/Ya Es Tiempo
Natasha Borovsky for A Daughter of the Nobility
Raymond Federman for Smiles on Washington Square: A Love Story of Sorts
Susan Howe for My Emily Dickinson
Terence Winch for Irish Musicians/American Friends
Toshio Mori for Yokohama, California
1987
Ai for SIN
Ana Castillo for The Mixquiahuala Letters
Cyn Zarco for Cir'cum.nav'i.ga'tion
Daniel McGuire for Portrait of Little Boy in darkness
Dorothy Bryant for Confessions of Madame Psyche: Memoirs and Letters of Mei-Li Murrow
Etheridge Knight for The Essential Etheridge Knight
Gary Giddins for Celebrating Bird: The Triumph Of Charlie Parker
Harvey Pekar for The New American Splendor Anthology: From Off the Streets of Cleveland
James Welch for Fools Crow
John Wieners for Selected Poems: 1958–1984
Juan Felipe Herrera for Face Games
Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum for liberazione della donna: feminism in Italy
Michael Mayo for Practicing Angels: A Contemporary Anthology of San Francisco Bay Area Poetry
Septima Poinsette Clark, Cynthia Stokes Brown for Ready from Within: A First Person Narrative
Terry McMillan for Mama
1988
Allison Blakely for Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought
Charles Olson for The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems
Daisy Bates for The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir
David Halberstam for The Reckoning
Edward Sanders for Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Poems 1961–1985
Gerald Vizenor for Griever: An American Monkey King in China
Jimmy Santiago Baca for Martin & Meditations on the South Valley
Kesho Y. Scott, Cherry Muhanji, Egyirba High for Tight Spaces
Marlon K. Hom for Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown
Benjamin Hoff for The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: The Mystical Nature Diary of Opal Whiteley
Ronald Sukenick for Down and in: Life in the Underground
Salvatore La Puma for The Boys of Bensonhurst
Toni Morrison for Beloved
Wing Tek Lum, Tek Lum Lum for Expounding the Doubtful Points
1989
Alma Luz Villanueva for The Ultraviolet Sky
Askia M. Touré for From the Pyramids to the Projects: Poems of Genocide and Resistance!
Audre Lorde for A Burst of Light
Carolyn Lau for Wode Shuofa: My Way of Speaking
Emory Elliott for Columbia Literary History of the United States
Eduardo Galeano for Genesis
Frank Chin for The Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co.
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