On Friday, Sept. 18, the 91st Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (AWBA) ceremony will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the historic Maltz Performing Arts Center in University Circle in Cleveland.
Free to the public with a reservation, the event will present the awards to the five 2026 AWBA winners: Bench Ansfield (nonfiction), Sarah Aziza (memoir), Gbenga Adesine (poetry), Carrie R. Moore (fiction), and Nell Irvin Painter (lifetime achievement).
According to the organization, the AWBA “recognizes books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures.”
“This is our fifth year in a row at the Maltz Performing Arts Center,” said Kortney Morrow, AWBA program director, of the event that previously was held at Playhouse Square for a decade. “Tickets are available now, and they are going quickly. We are hoping to sell out this year. The capacity in the venue is a little over 1,000.”
Immediately following the ceremony there will be an after party and reception across the street at the Park Lane Villa, with a jazz ensemble, food and drink, and opportunities to purchase the winner’s books and have them autographed.
“We are excited to close down the street like we did last year for the 90th anniversary and continue expanding the footprint over to Park Lane and making sure guests have multiple opportunities to interact and mingle with the winning authors,” Morrow said.
Earlier in the day, the AWBA weekend will officially kickoff with a City Club forum featuring memoir winner Sarah Aziza in conversation with Nadine Abusada, a reporter from News 5 Cleveland who covers immigration and Middle Eastern communities. The discussion will focus on Aziza’s book “The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders.”
“Nadine is a news reporter from Channel 5, and she has Palestinian background, so that will be a very dynamic and interesting conversation,” Morrow said.
Founded by Cleveland poet Edith Anisfield-Wolf in 1935, AWBA was the first, and remains the only, juried prize that honors books on these topics. Last year, the Cleveland Foundation, which manages the AWBA, elevated the prize money from $10,000 to $30,000, doubling the amount received by Pulitzer Prize winners.
PBS superstar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher university professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard, served as jury chair from 1996 until 2024. He won the prize himself in 1989.
Of Edith Anisfield-Wolf, Gates wrote: “Thoughtful, provocative writing about cultural identity has been rare in this country, so that makes it even more remarkable that in 1935 — 20 years before the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education — a Cleveland poet with a strong sense of social justice created a book prize to honor writers who have contributed to our understanding of race and racism.”
Today, more than 250 award winning books represent a valuable resource library for students, scholars, diversity professionals, teachers and writers. Winners include a wide range of significant poets, playwrights, fiction and nonfiction authors, including Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neal Hurston, Maxine Hong Kingston and Andrew Solomon.
Seven recipients have also won Nobel prizes: Ralph J. Bunche, Nadine Gordimer, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Gunnar Myrdal, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott and Ohioan Toni Morrison.
“It’s a who’s who of great authors going back over the course of the AWBA,” said Bill Kelly, adult programming manager at Cuyahoga County Public Library (CCPL). “If you read every winner of the AWBA over that time, you’d be well-versed in literary history.”
Each year, Kelly added, the 27 CCPL branches throughout Northeast Ohio schedule discussions about the AWBA winners’ books. They also often host the winners when they visit Cleveland.
Literary crawl
The next day, Saturday, Sept. 19, based on the strength of last year’s event in Ohio City, there will be another literary crawl taking place that will feature four of the winners at four different locations within walking distance of each other in Ohio City and the Flats.
“The idea is Friday is the literary event of the year, the literary night of the year. People get dressed up. There are 1,000 people that are going to come out for that Friday ceremony,” explained Morrow, who conceived of the idea last year, her first year as program director, as part of the 90th anniversary celebrations. “Then the following day, there’s a series of small, intimate events of not more than 75 people per event to do a deeper dive into each of our winners and their books.”
Available on the AWBA website, tickets are also free with a reservation.
This year, the crawl will kick off at 11 a.m. in the Ohio City Room at Market Garden Brewery on West 25th Street. Bench Ansfield, whose book “Born in Flames” won the nonfiction prize, will be in conversation with DeRay Mckesson, a civil rights activist and Campaign Zero executive director, and Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenant Union Federation.
“That will be an exceptional conversation about the arson waves and criminalization of young Black and brown people in the Bronx as a result of that arson wave during the 1970s and a little bit about tenant organizing, as well,” Morrow said.
Then people will walk about one and a half blocks to the restaurant Jaja Cleveland, where memoir winner Aziza will be in conversation with Cleveland poet and John Carroll University English professor Philip Metres at noon. Cleveland Public Theatre’s Arabic ensemble, Masrah Cleveland Al-Arabi, will perform a staged reading of the Arabic translation portion of “The Hollow Half.”
“Sarah’s words are going to come off the page, and it’s going to be very energetic and electric,” Morrow said. “Then Phil and Sarah will have a dynamic conversation about the memoir.”
After a brief break, attendees will reconvene at 2:30 p.m. in the Carriage Room at The Foundry rowing and sailing center in the Flats, where fiction winner Carrie R. Moore will discuss her short story collection “Make Your Way Home.”
“She’ll be in conversation with a cultural thought leader and writer Stevona Elem-Rogers, who’s rooted in the South and has been featured in Essence and i-D Magazine and beyond.” Morrow said. “They’re going to converse about Black romance, faith, spirituality, belonging and the future of the American South.”
The literary crawl events will conclude at the Tank Room in The Foundry, where poetry winner, Gbenga Adesina, will read from his book “Death Does Not End at the Sea.”
“The Tank Room has these two simulators for rowing and we’ll have the water rushing as people walk in but we’ll turn it off for the reading,” Morrow said. “Then he’s going to be in conversation with poet Ajanaé Dawkins from Columbus and host of the Verses podcast, and they’ll have a conversation about grief, the memory of water and the sea, belonging, borders and citizenship.”
Cleveland Book Festival
The AWBA weekend is actually the culmination of Cleveland Book Fest, a month-long celebration of the literary arts in Northeast Ohio, led by eight different literary partners: AWBA, Literary Cleveland, The City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland Public Library, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Great Lakes African American Writers Conference, Lake Erie Ink, and Writers in Residence.
Last year, the partners expanded Cleveland Book Fest from one week to the entire month of September.
In 2016, Bill Kelly, who oversees author events at all CCPL branches and curates CCPL’s Writers Center Stage season, generated the idea of a book festival with Karen Long, who was then AWBA’s program director, to celebrate the literary culture of Cleveland.
“We put our heads together, because we knew there’s such a rich literary culture here in Northeast Ohio,” he said. “We thought having this umbrella brand over some of the things we’re already doing would help elevate public awareness of all of the good work that was being done, and what we first conceived of as Cleveland Book Week has grown every year since.”
For Morrow and all of the partners the goal is for the entire month of September to be a literary takeover of Greater Cleveland.
“We’re trying to get every single resident in Northeast Ohio engaged with a book,” she said. “All of the partners have been working hard to program what September will look like with book-related events throughout the month.”
On Aug. 30, Cleveland Book Fest 2026 launched by taking over The Arcade downtown, transforming the lower level into a book fair run by the book festival partners, local bookstores and literary organizations. The event was attended by hundreds of bibliophiles ready to shop for books, book-related merchandise and literary programs.
“With celebrations, author talks, poetry readings, and writing workshops — we bring contemporary thought leaders and award-winning writers to Cleveland to spark a new wave of literary enthusiasts,” Morrow said.
This year’s festival events featured a variety of writers, including several AWBA winners.
Painter, this year’s lifetime achievement winner, was also featured at the 9th Annual Great Lakes African American Writer’s Conference on Sept. 5, where she spoke with Glory Edim, Nigerian-American writer and entrepreneur.
Colson Whitehead, 2002 AWBA fiction winner for “John Henry Days,” was headliner for Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator conference Sept. 9-12. He was in conversation with Kevin Young, who won a 2018 AWBA for his nonfiction book “Bunk.”
On Sept. 11, Marlon James, who won the 2015 AWBA for his novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” spoke in Cleveland to promote his new book, “The Disappearers.”
On Sept. 14, as part of CCPL’s William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series
Jesmyn Ward, who won a 2018 AWBA for her novel “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” spoke in Cleveland. She was in conversation with this year’s fiction winner Moore.
On Sept. 20, Tessa Hulls, 2025 AWBA memoir winner for her graphic novel “Guided By Ghosts” will lead a cartooning workshop focused on mapmaking and cartography at The West Side Market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a book signing to follow.
“The overall impetus behind the fest is to celebrate our rich, vibrant literary culture in Cleveland and a long history that continues to grow,” said Kelly of the festival’s embarrassment of riches for book lovers. “We’re taking all of the good work the partners do year round and creating a space that allows us to have conversations that create shared language for experiences that otherwise might remain private or unspoken for readers but become a special experience for everyone.”
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