The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program honors Black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers.Each fall, writers and publishers are invited to submit fiction, nonfiction and poetry books published that year. Panels of acclaimed writers serve as judges to select nominees, finalists and winners. A number of merit awards are also presented. Nominees are honored at the Legacy Awards ceremony, held the third Friday in October. The awards ceremony is hosted and organized by the Hurston/Wright Foundation. The 2018 award honorees were announced in June. The Legacy Awards, granted for fiction, nonfiction and poetry, are selected in a juried competition.The 2018 award winners were Alain Mabanckou in fiction for Black Moses; Ladee Hubbard in debut fiction for The Talented Ribkins; Tiya Miles in nonfiction for The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits; and Evie Shockley in poetry for Semiautomatic. The North Star Award pays homage to the significance of the North Star for enslaved Africans, who looked to it as a guide to freedom. The recipients of the award are individuals whose writing and/or service to the writing community serves as a beacon of brilliant accomplishment and as an inspiration to others. The 2018 North Star award winner was Ntozake Shange, author of the Obie Award-winning choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Shange was presented with the award a week before her death. The Ella Baker Award, named for the heroic civil rights activist, recognizes writers and arts activists for exceptional work that advances social justice. There was no 2018 winner. The 2017 Ella Baker award winner was Congressman John Lewis. The Madam C.J. Walker Award, named for the pioneering entrepreneur and philanthropist, recognizes exceptional innovation in supporting and sustaining Black literature. The 2018 Madam C.J. Walker award winner was Dr. Charles Rowell, founder and editor of the literary journal Callaloo. The Hurston/Wright Foundation honors excellence in writing by Black college students with the Award for College Writers. The award, sponsored by Amistad books, a division of Harper Collins Publishers, is presented in the categories of fiction and poetry. The 2018 Award for College Writers recipients were Desiree Evans in fiction and Christell Victoria Roach in poetry. Winner: The Talented Ribkins by Ladee HubbardNominees: What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon Winner: Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou2 Finalists: The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn WardNominees: What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah The Tragedy of Brady Sims by Ernest J. Gaines Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani Winner: The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits by Tiya MilesFinalists: Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education by Noliwe Rooks The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. TwittyNominees: Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. by Danielle Allen Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy by Sheryll Cashin Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History by Camille T. Dungy Winner: Semiautomatic by Evie ShockleyFinalists: Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealey Incendiary Art by Patricia SmithNominees: City of Bones by Kwame Dawes Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae Winner: Damnificados by JJ Amaworo WilsonNominees: Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John Winner: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead2 Finalists: The Loss of All Lost Things by Amina Gautier Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline WoodsonNominees: The Mother by Yvvette Edwards The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden Swing Time by Zadie Smith Winner: Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross2 Finalists: The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, And Reconciliation After the Genome by Alondra Nelson In The Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina SharpeNominees: The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge Winner: Bestiary by Donika Kelly2 Finalists: play dead by francine j. harris Thief in the Interior by Phillip B. WilliamsNominees: Third Voice by Ruth Ellen Kocher Rapture by Sjohnna McCray The Crown Ain't Worth Much by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib Winner: Mourner's Bench by Sanderia FayeNominees The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma Winner: Delicious Foods by James Hannaham2 Finalists: The Turner House by Angela Flournoy The Lost Child by Caryl PhillipsNominees: The Sellout by Paul Beatty Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta Winner: Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk2 Finalists: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic by Gerald HorneNominees: Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture by Ron Stodghill Infectious Madness: The Surprising Science of How We “Catch” Mental Illness by Harriet A. Washington The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America by D. Watkins Winner: Forest Primeval by Vievee Francis2 Finalists: Honest Engine by Kyle Dargan Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross GayNominees: How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time by Angela Jackson Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis Winner The Moor's Account by Laila LalamiFinalists An Untamed State by Roxane Gay Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie YaniqueNominees The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed Winner Not For Everyday Use by Elizabeth NunezFinalists Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.Nominees Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen Malcolm X at Oxford Union by Saladin Ambar Losing Our Way by Bob Herbert Winner Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia RankineFinalists Revising the Storm by Geffrey Davis King Me by Roger ReevesNominees We Don't Know Any Gangsters by Brian Gilmore Digest by Gregory Pardlo The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon by Willie Perdomo Winner We Need New Names by NoViolet BulawayoFinalists See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid The Residue Years by Mitchell S. JacksonNominees Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen The Good Lord Bird by James McBride The Gospel According to Cane by Courttia Newland Winner Ebony & Ivory by Craig WilderFinalists Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker by Stanley Crouch Men We Reaped by Jesmyn WardNominees Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home by Sheri Booker The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights by William P. Jones Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau Winner Darktown Follies by Amaud Jamaul JohnsonFinalists Hemming the Water by Yona Harvey The Cineaste: Poems by A. Van JordanNominees Silverchest by Carl Phillips The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka What We Ask of Flesh by Remica L. Bingham Winner Half-Blood Blues by Esi EdugyanNominees Elsewhere, California by Dana Johnson Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden The Cutting Season by Attica Locke The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvette Edwards Winner The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and Rise and Decline of Black Politics by Fredrick HarrisNominees American Lynching by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy Exit: The Endings That Set Us Free by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City by Natalie Hopkinson Help Me To Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery by Heather Andrea Williams There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe Winner The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 by Lucille CliftonNominees But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram me and Nina by Monica Hand Winner Mr. Fox by Helen OyeyemiFinalists Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones Zone One by Colson WhiteheadNominees Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward You Are Free by Danzy Senna Winner Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement by Tomiko Brown-NaginFinalists Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga WainainaNominees My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir by Mark Whitaker Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry Winner the new black by Evie ShockleyNominees Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith Winner Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle EvansFinalists Glorious by Bernice L. McFadden Wench by Dolen Perkins-ValdezNominees How to Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories by Tiphanie Yanique How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans by Rosalyn Story Winner The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel WilkersonFinalists Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation by Rawn James Jr. The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 by Lawrence JacksonNominees Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture by Thomas Chatterton Williams Winner Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 by Elizabeth AlexanderNominees Lighthead by Terrance Hayes Skin, Inc: Identity Repair Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis Winner I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel by Percival EverettFinalists Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo Sag Harbor by Colson WhiteheadNominees Big Machine by Victor Lavalle Black Water Rising by Attica Locke The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zona Eze Winner Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin KelleyFinalists 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 HaygoodNominees More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City by William Julius Wilson Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial by James A. Miller The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama by Gwen Ifill Winners Sonata Mulattica: Poems by Rita Dove Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems by Haki R. MadhubutiNominees Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem by Mitchell L.H Douglas Gospel by Samiya Bashir Winner Say You're One of Them by Uwem AkpanFinalists Holding Pattern: Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn WardNominees Blood Colony by Tananarive Due Song Yet Sung by James McBride Stand the Storm by Breena Clarke Winner Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid by Frank B. WildersonFinalists Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi CoatesNominees Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth- Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina Somebody Scream: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power by Marcus Reeves The Agitator’s Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African- American Family by Sheryll Cashin The Headless Saints by Myronn Hardy Please by Jericho Brown Warhorses by Yusef Komunyakaa Winner She's Gone by Kwame DawesNominees Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard Them by Nathan McCall Winner The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DiazFinalists Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill The Story of the Cannibal Woman by Maryse CondéNominees Measuring Time: A Novel by Helon Habila The Guyanese Wander by Jan Carew The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi Winner Brother, I'm Dying by Edwige DanticatFinalists 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 IfillNominees Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil and the African Slave Trade by Gerald Horne The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why by Jabari Asim Winner Bouquet of Hungers by Kyle G. DarganNominees Conversion by Remica L. Bingham Quantum Lyrics by A. Van Jordan Winner Ancestor Stones by Aminatta FornaNominees Get Down: Stories by Asali Solomon Unburnable by Marie-Elena John Winner All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. JonesFinalists Dominion: A Novel by Calvin Baker Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieNominees Jump at the Sun by Kim McLarin Nowhere is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa’Thiong’o Winner Unbowed: A Memoir by Wangari MaathaiFinalists 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 RagusaNominees Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley by Christopher John Farley BookMarks: Reading in Black and White by Karla F.C. Holloway The River Flows On: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America by Walter C. Rucker Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith The Architecture of Language by Quincy Troupe Wind in a Box by Terrance Hayes Winner Freshwater Road by Denise NicholasNominees Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon Winner My Jim: A Novel by Nancy RawlesFinalists Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham The Untelling by Tayari JonesNominees Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips Joplin’s Ghost by Tananarive Due Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate Winner Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin by John Hope FranklinFinalists 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. FarringtonNominees My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations by Mary Frances Berry Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality by Dwight A. McBride Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition by Cheryl A. Wall Winner The Long Mile: The Shango Mysteries by Clyde W. FordNominees Love on the Dotted Line by David E. Talbert Who Does She Think She is? by Benilde Little Winner GraceLand by Chris AbaniNominees The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan Winner Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? by Maryse CondéFinalists The Dew Breaker by Edwige Danticat The Madonna of Excelsior by Zakes MdaNominees American Desert by Percival Everett Links by Nuruddin Farah The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley Winner Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis DeVeauxFinalists A Continent for the Taking by Howard French The End of Blackness by Debra J. DickersonNominees Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation and Revenge by Ellis Cose The Black Interior by Elizabeth Alexander The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream by Sheryll Cashin A Woman's Worth by Tracy Price-Thompson Bling by Erica Kennedy Shifting Through Neutral by Bridgett M. Davis Winner Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieFinalist A Place Between Stations by Stephanie Allen Knee-Deep in Wonder by April ReynoldsNominee Daughter by Asha Bandele Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer Getting Mother’s Body by Suzan-Lori Parks Winner Hunting in Harlem by Mat JohnsonFinalists A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips The Polished Hoe by Austin ClarkeNominees Hottentot Venus by Barbara Chase-Riboud The Known World by Edward P. Jones The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson Winner In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil HaygoodFinalists Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity by E. Patrick Johnson Mandela, Mobutu and Me by Lynne DukeNominees Always Wear Joy: My Mother Bold and Beautiful by Susan Fales-Hill Somebody’s Someone by Regina Louise Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd Winner Leaving Atlanta by Tayari JonesFinalists A Little Piece Of Sky by Nicole Bailey-Williams Fifth Born by Zelda LockhartNominees Gigantic by Marc Nesbitt River Woman by Donna Hemans Song of the Water Saints by Nelly Rosario Winner The Heart of Redness by Zakes MdaFinalists Douglass’ Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes The Ecstatic by Victor LavalleNominees Discretion by Elizabeth Nunez Water Street by Crystal Wilkinson Without a Name and Under the Tongue by Yvonne Vera Winner Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies by Elizabeth McHenryFinalists Passed On: African American Mourning Stories by Karla FC Holloway The Herndons: An Atlanta Family by Carole MerrittNominees American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America by Leon E. Wynter Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius by Lawrence Jackson Winner Gabriel’s Story by David Anthony DurhamFinalists Greenwichtown by Joyce Palmer The Red Moon by Kuwana HaulseyNominees Breathing Room by Patricia Elam Break Any Woman Down by Dana Johnson The Dying Ground by Nichelle D. Tramble Winner Erasure by Percival EverettFinalists Bombingham by Anthony Grooms October Suite by Maxine ClairNominees Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley He Sleeps by Reginald McKnight The Warmest December by Bernice L. McFadden Winner In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understand His Father’s Legacy by Ken WiwaFinalists On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A’Lelia Bundles The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist’s Journey, 1898–1939 by Paul Robeson Jr.Nominees Impossible Witnesses: Truths, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony by Dwight McBride Raising Fences: A Black Man’s Love Story by Michael Datcher Salvation: Black People and Love by bell hooks