Diverse Book Awards for Adults

"A debut story collection about Cambodian-American life-immersive and comic, yet unsparing-that marks the arrival of an indisputable new talent in American fiction." Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (2021).

"Weaving together the legacies of US settler colonialism, slavery, and border control, Ramírez challenges the assumption that racialization and assimilation are separate and incompatible processes." MLA Prize, Honorable Mention (2021).

"An innovative look at all of the disabling experiences to which northern soldiers were subjected-physical and mental, in camp and on the battlefield." Disability History Association Award (2020).

"Weaves together Hui's own family history--from her grandfather's decision to leave behind a wife and newborn son for a new life, to her father's path from cooking in rural China to running some of the largest "Western" kitchens in Vancouver, to the unravelling of a closely guarded family secret--with the stories of dozens of Chinese restaurant owners from coast to coast." Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Nonfiction Award, Honorable Mention (2020).

"In this vividly rendered book, Emily A. Owens wrestles with the question of why white men paid notoriously high prices to gain sexual access to the bodies of enslaved women to whom they already had legal and social access." Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Book Prize (2024).

"Deploying illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the 'creation myth' of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed." Before Columbus Foundation America Book Award (2021).

"The first in-depth study of state-making and social change in Gilgit-Baltistan, a Shia-majority region of Sunni-dominated Pakistan and a contested border area that forms part of disputed Kashmir." Association for Asian Studies - Bernard Cohn Prize (2020).

"A coming of age memoir about growing up queer in a strict Muslim household." Lambda Literary Award-Gay Memoir (2021).

"In this novel told in Spanglish, fifteen-year-old Francisca is uprooted from her life in Bogotá, Colombia, and moves with her family to Miami, Florida, where she is ushered into an evangelical church and falls in love with the pastor's daughter." Lambda Literary Award-Lesbian Fiction (2020).

"The vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies." Barbellion Prize (2020).

"Recounts two years living with a group of hijras (one of India's third gendered or trans populations) in rural India." Ruth Benedict Prize, Association for Queer Anthropology (2021).

"Preetha Mani examines canonical Hindi and Tamil short stories of the mid-twentieth century to redefine Indian literature as constituted by the irresolvable questions of its multiple languages' relationship to its literatures." Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies (2023).

"Noelani Arista (Kanaka Maoli) uncovers a trove of previously unused Hawaiian language documents to chronicle the story of Hawaiians' experience of encounter and colonialism in the nineteenth century." Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Prize (2020).

"A visionary leader and gifted refugee activist shows how she grew a soccer team into a nationally acclaimed network of schools by homing in on what traumatized students need to learn and making the school for those most in need." Arab American Book Award, Honorable Mention (2022).

"Examines the concurrent development of a border agricultural industry and changing methods of border enforcement in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas during the past century." National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies Prize (2020).

"Sacks leads readers from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment to the present day to show that there is no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility, arguing that we all must play our part in rebuilding a common moral foundation." National Jewish Book Award (2020).

"The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi, whose conversations with the writer Michael Frank over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale." National Jewish Book Award, Holocaust Memoir (2023).

Speeches from the annual OutWrite conference, which "played a pivotal role in shaping LGBTQ literary culture in the United States and its emerging canon." Lambda Literary Awards: LGBTQ+ Anthology (2023).

"A study for reading and interpreting disability and illness narrative and stigma within a neoliberal context." Alison Piepmeier Prize from the National Women's Studies Association (2022).

"Honored three times as one of China's "top ten" poets, Zang Di observes nature, relationships and self in these startling and moving lyrics." Association for Asian Studies - Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize (2020).

"An intimate and original look at the lives of Nevada's legal sex workers through the voices of current and former employees, brothel owners, madams, and local law enforcement." National Women's Studies Association - Whaley Prize, Honorable Mention (2019).

"Drawing on a wide range of Arabic, French, Italian, and English sources, A Slave Between Empires is a groundbreaking transimperial microhistory that demands a major analytical shift in the conceptualization of North African history." Middle East Studies Association Prize (2020).

Jamaican literature, "the story of Moshe Fisher, a man who was 'born without skin,' so that no one is able to tell what race he belongs to; and Arrienne Christie, his quixotic soul mate who makes it her duty in life to protect Moshe from the social and emotional consequences of his strange appearance." Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award (2020).

"Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what he calls 'Black gay habits of mind.'" Honorable Mention, Ruth Benedict Prize, Association for Queer Anthropology (2022).

"In this poetry debut Mosab Abu Toha writes about his life under siege in Gaza, first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is inspired by a profound humanity." Palestine Book Award (2022).

"A novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by the truths they carry close to their hearts. Five years after a suspicious fire killed his mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one." Lambda Literary Award - Transgender Fiction (2021).