Two Women Scholars to Receive Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards

The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize works that make important contributions to our understanding of racism and cultural diversity. The awards, now in their 81st year, are presented by the Cleveland Foundation. Winners each receive a $10,000 prize.

The prize jury is headed by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. This year’s Anisfield-Wolf awards will be presented at the Ohio Theatre in Cleveland on September 15.

Two of the five winners this year are women with ties to the academic world.

Mary Morris, a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, will be honored in the fiction category for her novel The Jazz Palace. The book tells the story of three individuals in Prohibition-era Chicago. The novel is professor Morris’ 15th book. Professor Morris is a graduate of Tufts University in Massachusetts and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University.

Lillian Faderman, is a professor emerita at California State University, Fresno. She will be honored in the nonfiction category for her book The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (Simon & Schuster, 2015). Professor Faderman was born in New York but raised in Los Angeles. She earned her education at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles. She retired from teaching at California State University, Fresno in 2007.