In the Margins Award
The In the Margins Award, established in 2013, is an annual literary award presented to fiction and nonfiction "self published books by, for and about people of color living in the margins."[1] The primary audience of the books is generally individuals aged 9-21 who are Black, Indigenous People of Color; "youth from a street culture," "youth in restrictive custody," and/or "youth who are reluctant readers."[2]
The In the Margins Award was established as part of the Library Services for Youth in Custody but since 2017, has operated independently.[1]
Recipients
| Year | Genre | Author | Title | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Fiction | Paul Langan | Survivor | [3] |
| Sharon E McKay and Daniel Lafance (Illus.) | War Brothers: The Graphic Novel | |||
| Terra Elan McVoy | Criminal | |||
| Meg Medina | Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass | |||
| Susan Nussbaum | Good Kings, Bad Kings | |||
| Jeff Rivera | No Matter What | |||
| Darlene Ryan | Pieces of Me | |||
| Pamela Samuels Young | Anybody’s Daughter | |||
| Nonfiction | M. K. Asante | Buck: A Memoir | ||
| Marilyn Denise Jones | From Crack to College and Vice Versa | |||
| 2015 | Fiction | Lynne Ewing | The Lure | [4] |
| Ashley Little | Anatomy of a Girl Gang | |||
| Kekla Magoon | How It Went Down | |||
| Jason Reynolds | When I Was the Greatest | |||
| P. D. Workman | Ruby: Between the Cracks (Volume 1) | |||
| Nonfiction | Pacc Butler | From God’s Monster to the Devil’s Angel | ||
| Ebony Canion | Left for Dead | |||
| Michelle Miles | The High Price I Had to Pay 2: Sentenced to 30 Years as a Nonviolent, First Time Offender | |||
| Rayshawn Wilson | Lionheart: Coming from Where I’m From | |||
| Angela Beth Zusman | The Griots of Oakland: Voices from the African American Oral History Project | |||
| 2016 | Fiction | Kevin Deutch | The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips | [5] |
| E. R. Frank | Dime | |||
| Peggy Kern | Little Peach | |||
| Patti Laboucane-Benson | The Outside Circle | |||
| PD Workman | Tattooed Teardrops | |||
| Nonfiction | Tewhan Butler | America’s Massacre: The Audacity of Despair and a Message of Hope | ||
| Alton Carter | The Boy Who Carried Bricks: A True Story of Survival | |||
| Tony Lewis, Jr. | Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration | |||
| Richard Ross | Girls In Justice | |||
| Julian Voloj | Ghetto Brother: Warrior to Peacemaker | |||
| 2017 | Fiction | Christy Lynn Abram | Little Miss Somebody | [6] |
| Michael McLellan | American Flowers | |||
| Nonfiction | Alton Carter | Aging Out: A True Story | ||
| Kathleen Glasgow | Girl in Pieces | |||
| Ben Westhoff | Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap | |||
| S. C. Sterling | Teenage Degenerate | |||
| Ni-Ni Simone | Dear Yvette | |||
| C. Desire | Other Broken Things | |||
| Jeffry W. Johnston | The Truth | |||
| Free Minds Book Club | The Untold Story of the Real Me: Young Voices from Prison | |||
| 2018 | Fiction | Beacon House Writers. K. Crutcher (Ed.) with Z. Gatti (Design) | The Day Tajon Got Shot | [7] |
| Peter Edwards | The Biker’s Brother | |||
| Beth Goobie | The Pain Eater | |||
| William Kowalski | Jumped In | |||
| Tony Medina with John Jennings and Stacey Robinson (Illus.) | I am Alfonso Jones | |||
| Colleen Nelson | Blood Brothers | |||
| Christopher Paslay | White Flight | |||
| Nonfiction | Eve Porinchak | One Cut | ||
| Taura Stinson and Stacey Debono (Eds.) and Glenn Adhama (Illus.) | 100 Things Every Black Girl Should Know | |||
| Poetry | rm drake | Broken Flowers: And Other Stairways to Heaven | ||
| 2019 | Fiction | Hobson Brandon | Where the Dead Sit Talking | [8][9] |
| 2E G | Queenpin | |||
| Brown Kevin | Hard Knocks High: Darkskins and Redbones | |||
| Colfer Eoin, Andrew Donkin, and Giovanni Rigano (Illus.) | Illegal | |||
| Nonfiction | Goozh Judi and Sue Jeweler | Tell Me About When Moms and Dads Go to Jail: Tell Me About Jail | ||
| Goozh Judi and Sue Jeweler | Tell Me About When Moms and Dads Come Home From Jail: Tell Me About Jail | |||
| Griffin-Wallace Valencia | Motherless Child: A Journey of Growing Up and Forgiving | |||
| Hawkins Lamont U-God | Raw: My Journey Into the Wu-Tang | |||
| Hobson Brandon | Where the Dead Sit Talking | |||
| Jarrett Krosoczka | Hey, Kiddo | |||
| Latin American Youth Center Writers and Santiago Casares | Voces sin Fronteras: Our Stories, Our Truth | |||
| Ramos Nonieqa | The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary | |||
| 2020 | Fiction | Tasha Spillett-Sumner and Natasha Donavan | Surviving the City | [10] |
| Sonia Patel | Bloody Seoul | |||
| René Colato Laínez and Fabricio Vanden Broeck | My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando tres Fronteras | |||
| Annette D. Taylor | Dreams on Fire | |||
| Erika T. Wurth | You Who Enter Here | |||
| Nonfiction | Tytianna N. M. Wells and Ashley Cathey | When Hip Hop Met Poetry: An Urban Love Story | ||
| Johnathan Harris and Gary Leach | Colorblind: A Story on Racism | |||
| Jean Mendoza, Debbie Reese, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz | An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People (ReVisioning American History for Young People) | |||
| Rex Ogle | Free Lunch | |||
| Damon Young | What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger | |||
| 2021 | Fiction | Normandy D. Piccolo | Why is Kristyn a Kutter? | [11] |
| James Price | The Comeback: I Raised These Streets | |||
| David A. Robertson, Scott B. Henderson, and Donavan Yaciuk | The Reckoner Rise: Breakdown | |||
| Michael W. Waters and Keisha Morris | For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World | |||
| Nonfiction | Mark Bleschke | Into the Streets: A Young Person’s Visual History of Protest in the United States | ||
| Heather Gale and Mika Song | Ho'onani: Hula Warrior | |||
| Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bendele | When They Call You a Terrorist: A Story of Black Lives Matter and the Power to Change the World | |||
| Passage Academy Students at Belmont | Everything I Been Through | |||
| 2022 | Fiction | Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson | Milo Imagines the World | [12] |
| Sharon G. Flake | The Life I’m In | |||
| Free Minds Writers | They Called Me 299-359: Poetry by the Incarcerated Youth of Free Minds | |||
| Emolie Kpadea, Japan Spells, Damarco Taylor, and Rob Gibson | And Justice for Who? | |||
| Nonfiction | John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury, and Nate Powell | Run: Book One | ||
| Chella Man and Ashley Lukashevsky | Continuum (A Pocket Change Collective) | |||
| Marcia Argueta Mickelson | Where I Belong | |||
| Victorya Rouse | Finding Refuge: Real Life Immigration Stories From Young People | |||
| Elisabet Velasquez | When We Make It | |||
| Frank Abe, Tamiko Nimura, Ross Ishikawa, and Matt Sasaki | We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance at Wartime Incarceration | |||
| 2023 | Fiction | Jason Reynolds, Jason Griffin | Ain’t Burned all the Bright | [13] |
| Charles A. Bush | Every Variable of Us | |||
| Sergio Troncoso | Nobody’s Pilgrims | |||
| Juliana Goodman | The Black Girl Left Standing. | |||
| Natalie Blank | The Tangibles | |||
| Non-fiction | Jetta Grace Martin, Joshua Bloom, and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. | Freedom! The Story of the Black Panther Party | ||
| Kirstin Cronn-Mills | Gender Inequality in Sports from Title IX to World Titles | |||
| Larry Miller, Lacia Lucy | Jump: My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom | |||
| David Grann | Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Young Readers: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. | |||
| Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop | When You Hear Me, You Hear Us: Voices of Youth Incarcerated | |||
| 2024 | Fiction | Wanda John-Kehewin, Nicole Burton, and Kielamel Sibal | Dreams: Visions of the Crow, Volume 1 | [14] |
| Kelly J. Baptist | Eb and Flow | |||
| Kim Johnson | Invisible Son | |||
| Katy Grant | Three Shots | |||
| Non-fiction | Akim Aliu, Greg Anderson Elysée, Karen de la Vega and Marcus Williams | Akim Aliu: Dreamer | ||
| Alex Wheattle | Sufferah: The Memoir of a Brixton Raggae-Head | |||
| Ice-T, Spike, and Douglas Century | Split Decision: Life Stories | |||
| Social Justice Advocacy | James Hannaham | Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta | ||
| Junauda Petrus and Kristen Uroda | Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? | |||
| Kevin H. Abdur-Rahman. | The Eruption of Possible: To Burst From the Limits of Environment | |||
| 2025 | Fiction | Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson with Aaron Philip Clark | The Accomplice: A Novel | [15] |
| Desmond Hall | Better Must Come | |||
| David F. Walker | The Second Chance of Darius Logan | |||
| Hannah K. | Marty’s Kid | |||
| Non-fiction | Jay Patton, Antoine Patton, Kiara Valdez, and Markia Jenai | Dear Dad: Growing Up with a Parent in Prison — and How We Stayed Connected | ||
| Lawrence Ralph | Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him | |||
| Normandy D. Piccolo | One Pill Killed: Fentanyl Poisoning. Are you Next? | |||
| M. K. Asante | Nephew: a Memoir in 4-Part Harmony | |||
| Dorsey Nunn with Lee Romney | What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly: A Memoir of Resilience ans Resurrection | |||
| Social Justice Advocacy | Sonya Ballantyne, Rhael McGregor and Toben Racicot | Little by Little You Can Change the World | ||
| 2026 | Fiction | Normandy D. Piccolo | Bug | |
| Jason Reynolds | Coach | |||
| Helena Haywoode Henry | Last Chance Live! | [16] | ||
| Channelle Desamours | Needy Little Things | |||
| Kim Johnson | The Color of a Lie | |||
| Frederick Joseph | This Thing of Ours | |||
| Non-fiction | Emma Bland-Smith | Growing Up in the Shadow of Alcatraz | ||
| Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Paul Peart-Smith | Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States | |||
| Candace Fleming | Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Loat Dream of Jonestown | |||
| Raymond Santana | Pushing Hope: an Illustrated Memoir of Survival |
References
- 1 2 "History". In the Margins Book Awards. 2016-02-20. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ "About". In the Margins Book Awards. 2016-02-21. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ "2014 In the Margins Top Ten". In the Margins Book Awards. 2018-09-02. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ "2015 Fiction and Nonfiction Recommended List". In the Margins Book Awards. 2019-02-17. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ Diaz, Shelley (2016-03-16). "The 2016 In the Margins Book Awards Are Unveiled". School Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ "2017 Press Release ITM Awards". In the Margins Book Awards. 2017-01-30. Archived from the original on 2019-08-25. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ SLJ (2018-02-14). "The 2018 In the Margins Book Awards Announced". School Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ "2019 Top Ten ITM Titles". In the Margins Book Awards. 2019-02-06. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ Parrott, Kiera (2019-02-06). ""In the Margins" 2019 Book Awards Announced". School Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ Parrott, Kiera (2020-02-12). ""In the Margins" Committee Announces 2020 Book Awards Honoring Marginalized & BIPOC Youth". School Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ SLJ Staff (2021-02-09). "In the Margins Book Awards Announced". School Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ SLJ Staff (2022-01-31). "2022 In the Margins Book Awards Announced". School Library Journal. Archived from the original on 2022-01-31. Retrieved 2022-01-31.
- ↑ "2023 Top Ten Titles". 2023-02-09. Archived from the original on 2026-08-15. Retrieved 2026-08-15.
- ↑ "2024 Top Ten Titles". 2024-02-06. Retrieved 2026-08-16.
- ↑ "2025 Top Ten Titles". 2025-02-13. Retrieved 2026-08-16.
- ↑ "2026 TOP TEN List". 2026-02-26. Retrieved 2026-08-18.