Before Columbus Foundation · award year
American Book Awards 2025
The 2025 American Book Awards went to Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems by A.B. Spellman, By the Shore of Lake Michigan by Tomiko Matsumoto and Ryokuyo Matsumoto, Colored Television by Danzy Senna, Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First-Century Latinx Writers by Maceo Montoya and Javier O. Huerta, James by Percival Everett, Makeshift Altar: Poems by Amy M. Alvarez, Malas by Marcela Fuentes, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine, Selected Amazon Reviews by Kevin Killian, The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America by Sarah Lewis, This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, [...]: Poems by Fady Joudah and mother by m.s. RedCherries.
Winners
- Beautylandsource (opens in a new tab)
- Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poemssource (opens in a new tab)
- By the Shore of Lake Michigansource (opens in a new tab)
- Colored Televisionsource (opens in a new tab)
- Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First-Century Latinx Writerssource (opens in a new tab)
- Jamessource (opens in a new tab)
- Makeshift Altar: Poemssource (opens in a new tab)
- Malassource (opens in a new tab)
- Martyr!source (opens in a new tab)
- Mice 1961source (opens in a new tab)
- Selected Amazon Reviewssource (opens in a new tab)
- The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movementsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in Americasource (opens in a new tab)
- This Strange Eventful Historysource (opens in a new tab)
- [...]: Poemssource (opens in a new tab)
- mothersource (opens in a new tab)
About the American Book Awards
Every book the Before Columbus Foundation honored, 2006-2025. The award has no categories, nominees or shortlist, so every row is category Book, level Winner. Year is the announcement year. Sources are the Foundation's own press releases and programs (PDFs and images on beforecolumbusfoundation.com) for 2006, 2008-2014, 2016-2021 and 2024-2025. Fallback to Wikipedia's American Book Awards list for 2007 (the Foundation's poster names only the winners, matching Wikipedia's list), 2015, 2022 and 2023 (no Foundation release online; web.archive.org was unreachable). Lifetime achievement, editor/publisher, oral literature and anti-censorship honors for people, journals or presses are skipped. Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Awards and the 2021 Anti-Censorship Award are included when the release names a book (2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025). Edited works list the work's author where the release names one (Jack Spicer, Bob Kaufman, Jean Racine, Lorenzo Thomas, Jose Antonio Burciaga); otherwise the editors. The 2019 Vollmann honor covers both volumes of Carbon Ideologies and is one row. Titles lightly normalized from the releases (typos such as Each Moth I Sing, Victor Lavalle and The Big Machine fixed).
Organization: Before Columbus Foundation. Years are award years, which can differ from publication years. Official site (opens in a new tab)
Shares the most books with
- Goodreads Choice Awards 27 shared books
- PEN America Literary Awards 19 shared books
- National Book Awards 17 shared books
- Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence 14 shared books
- National Book Critics Circle Awards 14 shared books