Celebrating the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards with Kortney Morrow

So that does bring us to the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

For those who don't know, how do you describe the Anisfield Wolf Book Awards to people who may be coming to them for the first time? Or what's your elevator pitch for people?

Yeah.

I mean, there's so many ways I can describe it.

Usually what I say is...

The NSO Book Awards are the nation's only jury prize dedicated to honoring writers that are writing about race and diversity.

And then I usually just name drop a few of our previous winners.

We have over 250, but I usually point towards MLK, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Isabel Allende.

And I just keep going until I see people.

I

was going to say, yeah, exactly.

Just keep going.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I keep going until I see people's, you know, eyes turn brighter and then I know I have them.

And usually there's at least one person that people can recognize and Exactly, exactly.

And I think the fact that it is unique, I mean, the fact that it is based here in Cleveland, Ohio, and that Ohio can claim this is just absolutely fascinating.

I think it's great.

Could you talk a little bit about the history of the awards, you know, where they came from, you know, why they're unique, what's the back story, so to speak?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the awards were founded in 1935 by a white Jewish woman right here in the city of Cleveland.

Her name was Edith Anisil Wolf, and she was a woman far ahead of her time.

So she established a prize because around that time, she would have been looking around the city of Cleveland.

She would have saw rising anti-Semitism.

She would have seen deep segregation.