American Book Awards

The American Book Awards recognize outstanding literary achievement across the full range of American writing. They are given by the Before Columbus Foundation, an Oakland, California, nonprofit founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed and others to promote multicultural American literature. The foundation's board created the awards in 1978, with the first winners named in 1980, to honor excellence without regard to race, gender, cultural origin, genre or the size of a book's publisher.

The awards are deliberately unlike most literary prizes: there are no categories, no shortlists and no runners-up, only a group of winners chosen each year by writers rather than by an industry body. Recipients have ranged from first-time and small-press authors to figures such as Toni Morrison, Isabel Allende, Don DeLillo, Joy Harjo, bell hooks and Edward Said, across poetry, fiction, history, criticism and memoir. Winners are honored at a public ceremony in the fall. The awards are unrelated to the National Book Awards, which used the American Book Awards name from 1980 to 1986.

Books by American writers published in the previous year, in any genre and from any publisher; there are no categories or nominees.