Early Bird Table |The Hurston/Wright Foundation's 23rd Annual Legacy Awards

The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation is excited to celebrate 2024's Merit Award honorees and the 2024 Legacy Award nominees in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Historical Nonfiction, Memoir Nonfiction, and Poetry. The winners for the Legacy Awards will be announced on Friday, October 18, 2024, at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington D.C.

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 is the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers.

“The annual Legacy Awards Ceremony is a singular and coveted recognition of excellence in writing by Black authors.” Marita Golden, co-founder of The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.

Legacy Awards for Merit are awarded in three categories, including exceptional innovation in supporting and sustaining Black literature; exceptional work that advances social justice; and lifetime literary achievement. The Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Board of Directors selects Legacy Award merit awardees each year. The names of the merit awards are: The North Star Award; The Ella Baker Award and the Madam “CJ” Walker Award. This year’s merit awardees are:

The North Star Award: N.K. Jemisin

The Ella Baker Award: Claudia Rankine

Madam “CJ” Walker Award: Marcus Books

This year’s nominees are:

Debut Fiction Nominees |

Elizabeth Acevedo | Family Lore (Ecco)

Soraya Palmer | The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghost (Captault)

Kai Thomas | In the Upper Country (Viking Books)

Speculative Fiction Nominees |

Johnny Compton | Spite House (Tor Nightfire)

Moses Ose Utomi | Lies of Ajungo (Tordotcom)

Mary McLaughlin Slechta | Mulberry Street Stories (Four Way Books)

General Fiction Nominees|

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah | Chain-Gang All-Stars (Pantheon Books)

Cheryl A. Head | Time's Undoing (Dutton)

Ayana Mathis | The Unsettled (Alfred A. Knopf)

Mihret Sibhat | The History of a Difficult Child (Viking Books)

Historical NonFiction Nominees|

Victor Luckerson | Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street (Random House)

Donovan X. Ramsey | When Crack Was King (One World)

Yepoka Yeebo | Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Memoir Nominees|

Dionne Ford | Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing (Bold Type Books)

Emmanuel Iduma | I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History (Algonquin Books)

Cassandra Jackson | The Wreck: A Daughter’s Memoir of Becoming a Mother (Viking Books)

Leta McCollough Seletzky | The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Counterpoint)

Aomawa Shields | Life on Other Planets (Viking Books)

Poetry Nominees |

Amanda Gunn | Things I Didn't Do With This Body (Copper Canyon Press)

Patricia Spears Jones | The Beloved Community (Copper Canyon Press)

A. Van Jordan | When I Waked, I Cried To Dream Again (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Airea Dee Matthews | Bread & Circus (Scribner)

Charif Shanahan | Trace Evidence (Tin House)

Newly introduced, Creative Anthology

Host or Publisher The Hurston/Wright Foundation