For an outstanding book in African literary studies, which is the first book by the author, and published in the preceding calendar year. The award comes with a $250.00 cash prize.
2024 Winner: Polo Moji
Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary Afrofrench Narratives
Routledge, 2022
2023 Winner: Matthew H. Brown
Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address
Duke University Press, 2021
2022 Winner: Naminata DiabateNaked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa
Duke University Press, 2020
2022 Honorable Mention: Hoda El Shakry, The Literary Qur'an: Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb (Fordham University Press 2019)
2022 Honorable Mention: Cara Moyer-Duncan, Projecting Nation: South African Cinemas after 1994 (Michigan State University Press 2020)
2021 Winner: Tobias WarnerThe Tongue-Tied Imagination: Decolonizing Literary Modernity in Senegal
Fordham University Press, 2019
2021 Honorable Mention: Rebecca Jones, At the Crossroads: Nigerian Travel Writing and Literary Culture in Yoruba and English (James Currey, 2019)
2020 Winner: Cajetan IhekaNaturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature
Cambridge University Press, 2018
2019 Winner: Lindsey B. Green-SimmsPostcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa
University of Minnesota Press, 2017
2018 Winner: Ruth BushPublishing Africa in French: Literary Institutions and Decolonization 1945-1967
Liverpool University Press, 2016
2017 Winner: Stephane RobolinGrounds of Engagement: Apartheid-Era African-American and South African Writing
University of Illinois Press, 2015
2016 Winner: Tsitsi Ella JajiAfrican in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
2016 Honorable Mention: Mahriana Rofheart for Shifting Perceptions of Migration in Senegalese Literature, Film, and Social Media
2015 Winner: Carmela GarritanoAfrican Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History
Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013.
2014 Winner: Laura MurphyMetaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature
Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012.
See this year's Call for Nominations in Announcements for the dates and details on the next competition.