The winners of the Hurston/Wright Foundation 2023 Legacy Awards were announced in Washington D.C., USA on Thursday, October 26, 2023.
The Hurston/Wright Foundation is named for US African-American literary icons Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award honours the best in Black literature in the United States and around the globe. The Legacy Award was the first national award in the USA presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers since 2001. Fiction, nonfiction and poetry honourees are selected in a juried competition. Some of the previous winners include Alain Mabanckou, Colson Whitehead, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, Aminatta Forna, Kwame Dawes, and Uwem Akpan.
The nominees for this year’s awards were announced on Wednesday, June 28 before the winners were revealed on Thursday. The winners were;
Debut Fiction
Judges: Amina Gautier, Ron A. Austin and Preston Allen
- A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times: Stories, Meron Hadero (Restless Books)
Speculative Fiction
Judge: B. Sharise Moore
- Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, T.L. Huchu (Macmillan)
General Fiction
Judges: Morgan Christie, Lauren Francis-Sharma and Kim McLarin
- Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit About Carlotta, James Hannaham (Little Brown)
Historical Nonfiction
Judges: Gerald Horne and Ron Stodghill
- By Hands Now Known, Margaret Burnham (W.W. Norton & Company)
Memoir Nonfiction
Judges: Laurie Jean Carter and Sheri Booker
- Inciting Joy, Ross Gay (Algonquin Books)
Poetry
Judges: Asiya Wadud, Brian Gilmore and Chanda Feldman
- Concentrate, Courtney Faye Taylor, (Graywolf Press)
The lifetime achievement honourees are;
The North Star Award: Ishmael Reed
The Ella Baker Award: Carol Anderson
Madam “CJ” Walker Award: Troy Johnson
Responses
Really happy “Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments” has notched a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
T.L. Huchu
I’m honored and incredibly grateful to receive the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction! My thanks to the judges & @HurstonWright, and congrats to this year’s recipients and nominees!
Meron Hadero
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