Zora Legacy Awards 2025 winners announced

The winners of the Zora Legacy Awards 2025, formerly the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Awards, were announced on Friday, October 17, 2025.

The Zora Legacy Awards are a rebrand of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, organised by the Hurston/Wright Foundation, named after US African American literary icons Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Honouring 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, Meron Hadero, T.L. Huchu, James Hannaham, Margaret Burnham, and Courtney Faye Taylor.

The finalists for 2025 were made public on Friday, August 29, before the winners were revealed at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., USA, on Friday, October 17. The recipients in the different award categories are;

Legacy Book Awards

Debut Fiction

Judges: Sifiso Mzobe, Alaya Johnson

• Grown Women, Sarai Johnson, HarperCollins

General Fiction

Judges: Natashia Deon, Amina Gautier

• James, Percival Everett, Doubleday

Nonfiction

Judge: Morgan Christie

• This Thread of Gold: A Celebration of Black Womanhood, Catherine Joy White, Penguin Random House – Dutton
• Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Poetry

Judges: Hoke Glover, Courtney Faye Taylor, Chanda Felman

• Scattered Snows, to the North, Carl Phillips, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Legacy Merit Award

• North Star Award: David Levering Lewis
• Ella Baker Award: Mary Frances Berry
• Madam “CJ” Walker Award: Brenda M. Greene
• The Founders Award: E.Lynn Harris & Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

College Awards in Fiction and Poetry and the Crossover Award presented by Andscape

• College Award in Prose: Rebecca Haynesworth
• College Award in Poetry: Ariana Matondo
• Crossover Award: Brandon Lee