Here Are the Winners of the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards today announced the 2022 winners of the prestigious Cleveland-based competition, now celebrating its 87th year and the only literature arts prize given specifically to works that "confront racism and explore diversity."

This year's honors go to:

• Percival Everett, “The Trees,” Fiction
• Donika Kelly, “The Renunciations,” Poetry
• George Makari, “Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia,” Nonfiction
• Tiya Miles, “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake,” Nonfiction
• Ishmael Reed, Lifetime Achievement

“This round of Anisfield-Wolf winners brings us important insights on race and diversity,” jury chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. said in a release. “This year, we honor a satiric novel about lynching disguised as a detective story, a poetry collection that remakes the meanings of childhood abuse, an innovative look at the idea of xenophobia, and a story of recovered history based on an embroidered sack. All is capped by the lifetime achievement of Ishmael Reed, a genre-bending and genre-transcending colossus of literature.”

Gates and fellow jury members Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates,Simon Schama and Steven Pinker offered detailed, passionate congratulations to the winners and their works, extolling their importance in the literary landscape of America today, in a short video that accompanied the announcement.