American Book Awards

The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers."

The Award is administered by the Before Columbus Foundation, which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980, recognizing a list of eight 1979 publications. The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre. Previous winners include novelists, social scientists, poets, and historians such as Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Isabel Allende, bell hooks, Don DeLillo, Robin D.G. Kelley, Joy Harjo.

Current rendition

The 36th annual American Book Awards presented October 25, 2015 at the San Francisco Jazz Center. The winners are as follows:

Literary award

A literary award is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author.

Organizations

Most literary awards come with a corresponding award ceremony. Many awards are structured with one organization (usually a non-profit organization) as the presenter and public face of the award, and another organization as the financial sponsor or backer, who pays the prize remuneration and the cost of the ceremony and public relations, typically a corporate sponsor who may sometimes attach their name to the award (such as the Orange Prize).

Types of awards

There are awards for several forms of writing such as poetry and novels. Many awards are also dedicated to a certain genre of fiction or non-fiction writing (such as science fiction or politics). There are also awards dedicated to works in individual languages, e.g. the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (Spanish), and the Camões Prize (Portuguese), and the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Hugo Awards (English).