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American Book Awards

Not to be confused with the National Book Awards, the ABA is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement." It is a writer's award given by other writers and there are no categories,

American Book Awards
1980-1989

1980-1989

  • Douglas Woolf for Future preconditional: A collection
  • Edward Dorn for Hello, La Jolla
  • Jayne Cortez for Mouth on Paper
  • Leslie Marmon Silko for Ceremony
  • Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for Random Possession
  • Milton Murayama for All I Asking for Is My Body
  • Quincy Troupe for Snake Back Solos
  • Rudolfo Anaya for Tortuga, a novel
  • Alta for Shameless Hussy
  • Alan Chong Lau for Songs for Jadina
  • Bienvenido N. Santos for Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories
  • Helen Adam for Turn Again to Me & Other Poems
  • Lionel Mitchell for Traveling Light
  • Miguel Algarín for On Call
  • Nicholasa Mohr for Felita
  • Peter Blue Cloud for Back Then Tomorrow
  • Robert Kelly for The Time of Voice: Poems 1994–1996
  • Rose Drachler for The Choice
  • Susan Howe for The Liberties
  • Toni Cade Bambara for The Salt Eaters
  • Al Young for Bodies and Soul
  • Duane Niatum for Songs for the Harvester of Dreams: Poems
  • E. L. Mayo for Collected Poems E L Mayo
  • Frank Chin for The Chickencoop Chinaman and The Year of the Dragon
  • Hilton Obenzinger for This Passover or the next, I will never be in Jerusalem
  • Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, Judy Yung for Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940
  • Jerome Rothenberg for Pre-Faces and Other Writings
  • Joyce Carol Thomas for Marked by Fire
  • Leroy Quintana for Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets
  • Lorna Dee Cervantes for Emplumada
  • Ronald Phillip Tanaka for The Shino Suite: Japanese-American Poetry
  • Russell Banks for Book of Jamaica
  • Tato Laviera for Enclave
  • Barbara Christian for Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892–1976
  • Cecilia Liang for Chinese Folk Poetry
  • Evangelina Vigil-Piñón for Thirty: An' Seen a Lot
  • Harriet Rohmer for Legend of Food Mountain: LA Montana Del Alimento
  • James D. Houston for Californians: Searching for the Golden State
  • Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn for Pet food & tropical apparitions
  • John A. Williams for Click Song, a novel
  • Joy Kogawa for Obasan
  • Judy Grahn for The Queen of Wands: Poetry
  • Nash Candelaria for Not by the Sword
  • Peter Guralnick for Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians
  • Seán Ó Tuama for An Duanaire Sixteen Hundred to Nineteen Hundred: Poems of the Dispossessed
  • Cecil Brown for Days Without Weather
  • Gary Snyder for Axe Handles: Poems
  • Howard Schwartz, Mark Podwal for The Captive Soul of the Messiah: New Tales About Reb Nachman
  • Imamu Amiri Baraka for Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men
  • Jesús Colón for A Puerto Rican in New York, and Other Sketches
  • Joseph Bruchac for Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian-American Poets
  • Maurice Kenny for The Mama Poems
  • Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for The heat bird
  • Miné Okubo for Citizen 13660
  • Paule Marshall for Praisesong for the Widow
  • Ruthanne Lum McCunn, You-shan Tang, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung for Pie-Biter
  • Thomas McGrath for Echoes inside the labyrinth
  • Venkatesh Kulkarni for Naked in Deccan
  • William J. Kennedy for O Albany!