Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award
The Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award celebrates authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community. The award is presented each year at Poets & Writers’ annual gala. It is named for Barnes & Noble in appreciation of the company’s enduring support of Poets & Writers.
Recipients of the 2024 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award will be Laurie Halse Anderson, Roxane Gay, and Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Laurie Halse Anderson is a New York Times best-selling author whose writing spans young readers, teens, and adults. Her most recent book, SHOUT, a memoir-in-verse about surviving sexual assault at the age of thirteen and a manifesta for the #MeToo era, received widespread critical acclaim and was Anderson’s eighth New York Times best-selling book. Combined, her books have sold more than 8 million copies. Two of her novels,Speakand Chains, were National Book Award finalists, and Chains was short-listed for the prestigious Carnegie medal in the United Kingdom. Anderson is the 2023 recipient of Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, was selected by the American Library Association for the Margaret A. Edwards Award, and has been honored for defending intellectual freedom by the National Coalition Against Censorship and the National Council of Teachers of English. Her persistent efforts to combat censorship include joining Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and others in fighting censorship in the courts. In addition, she regularly speaks about the need for diversity in publishing and is a member of RAINN’s National Leadership Council.
Roxane Gay is a New York Times bestselling author, a professor, editor, and social commentator. Her books include the New York Times best-selling Bad Feminist, the nationally best-selling
Difficult Women, the New York Times best-selling Hunger, and, most recently, the nonfiction collection, Opinions. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel, and is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. Her writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. In 2021 she launched Roxane Gay Books, a Grove Atlantic imprint that focuses on underrepresented writers. Gay has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity, and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. The book version of The 1619 Project as well as the 1619 Project children’s book, Born on the Water, were instant No. 1 New York Times best-sellers. Her 1619 Project is now a six-part docuseries on Hulu. Hannah-Jones has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the Genius grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards and the National Magazine Award three times. She also serves as the Knight Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism & Democracy. Hannah-Jones is also the co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the number of investigative reporters and editors of color, and in 2022 she opened the 1619 Freedom School, a free, afterschool literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
Champion for Writers Award
The Champion for Writers Award will recognize Mitchell Kaplan for his leadership in the fight against censorship and his efforts to expand the literary conversation. Kaplan has made Books & Books a generous platform for authors whose books have been banned, and helped to create a literary festival that showcases the breadth of literary voices working in America today.
Mitchell Kaplan, a native of Miami Beach, opened the first Books & Books in 1982 in Coral Gables, Florida. Now with four South Florida locations, Books & Books hosts over 400 events per year and was selected as Publishers Weekly’s bookstore of the year. In 1985, Kaplan co-founded the Miami Book Fair, which takes place on the campus of Miami Dade College in the heart of downtown Miami. Each year the Fair presents close to 500 authors over one week in November, along with a street festival, where bookstalls line the streets adjacent to the campus. Kaplan, with his partner Paula Mazur, established the Mazur Kaplan Company to bring books to the screen, both film and television. He also hosts the podcast The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan. Kaplan received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation in 2011, served as president of the American Booksellers Association, and now serves on the Board of the National Coalition Against Censorship.
These awards will be presented on March 26, 2024, at the Poets & Writers Gala, In Celebration of Writers. Learn more here.
Previous Award Winners
2023
Colin Channer
Reyna Grande
Celeste Ng
Jennifer Hershey (Editor’s Award)
2022
Viet Thanh Nguyen
James Patterson
Sonia Sanchez
Sally Kim (Editor’s Award)
2020
Michael Chabon
Amanda Gorman
Oprah Winfrey (Leadership Award)
2019
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Neil Gaiman
Roxana Robinson
Dawn Davis (Editor’s Award)
2018
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Steve Cannon
Richard Russo
Rebecca Saletan (Editor’s Award)
2017
Francisco Goldman
Ann Patchett
Richard Shelton
Fiona McCrae (Editor’s Award)
Jeff Shotts (Editor’s Award)
2016
Elizabeth George
Undocupoets:
- Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Christopher Soto, and Javier Zamora
VIDA: Women in Literary Arts:
- Erin Belieu, Cate Marvin, and Ann Townsend
Paul Slovack (Editor’s Award)
2015
Margaret Atwood
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
Christopher Castellani
Barbara Epler (Editor’s Award)
2014
Ian Frazier
Haki R. Madhubuti
Joyce Carol Oates
Kate Medina (Editor’s Award)
2013
Steve Berry
Rigoberto Gonzalez
Judith Kelman
Chuck Adams (Editor’s Award)
Leonard Riggo (Leadership Award)
2012
David Baldacci
Kwame Dawes
Carol Muske-Dukes
Kathryn Court (Editor’s Award)
2011
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
John Grisham
Elizabeth Nunez
Jonathan Galassi (Editor’s Award)
2010
Junot Díaz
Maxine Hong Kingston
M. L. Liebler
Pat Strachan (Editor’s Award)
2009
Russell Banks
Robert Caro
Sarah Gambito
Daniel Halpern (Editor’s Award)
2008
Toi Derricotte
A.M. Homes
Peter Straub
2007
E. Ethelbert Miller
Francine Prose
Susan Richards Shreve
2006
Regie Cabico
Bill Henderson
Anna Quindlen
2005
Barbara Kingsolver
Sidney Offit
Quincy Troupe
2004
Judy Blume
Oakley Hall
Sharon Olds
2003
Bob Holman
Ishmael Reed
Amy Tan
2002
E. Lynn Harris
June Jordan
Wally Lamb
2001
Cornelius Eady
Marita Golden
Scott Turow
1999
Stanley Kunitz
Barbara Goldsmith
Terry McMillan
1998
Edward Albee
E. L. Doctorow
Susan Sontag
1997
Rita Dove
Stephen King
Hilma Wolitzer
1996
Mary Higgins Clark
James A. Michener
Arthur Miller
Walter Mosley
William Styron