Percival Everett and Donika Kelly are among the winners of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, given annually to “books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures.”
The Cleveland Foundation announced the winners of the prizes in a news release. Jury chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. said that this year’s class of winners “brings us important insights on race and diversity.”
Everett won the fiction prize for The Trees, which was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Everett is the most recent winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Award for lifetime achievement.
Donika Kelly won the poetry award for The Renunciations, which was also a finalist for this year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.
Miles’ All That She Carried, a Kirkus Prize finalist and National Book Award winner, was one of two books to win in the nonfiction category, along with George Makari’s Of Fear and Strangers.
Poet, playwright, and novelist Ishmael Reed (Mumbo Jumbo, Japanese by Spring) was honored with the lifetime achievement award.
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards were established by poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf in 1935. Previous winners have included Toni Morrison for Beloved, Tommy Orange for There There, and Isabel Wilkerson for The Warmth of Other Suns.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
