The Harold Washington Literary Award recognizes diverse and stimulating authors who address issues of contemporary life and whose literary achievements include a significant body of work that has touched the public mind and imagination. Harold Washington, the first African-American mayor of the City of Chicago, revered literature and epitomized the diversity of the American experience. The award, which bears his name, celebrates this spirit. The goal of this award is to present examples to the public of creative uses of the written word.

Recipients of this prestigious award are selected by a cross-cultural committee of representatives from Chicago’s literary community.

This award has been given annually since 1989 by Near South Planning Board at the Harold Washington Literary Award Dinner.

2025 Honoree: Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN/Nabokov Award for International Literature, the National Medal of Arts, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. Her novel The House on Mango Street has sold over seven million copies, has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. In 2024, it was published in the Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics Series. A new collection of poetry, Woman Without Shame, Cisneros’s first in 28 years, was published in 2022. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico. She earns her living by her pen.

For more information on Sandra Cisneros, please visit www.sandracisneros.com

Past Recipients of the HWLA

Tracy K. Smith (2024)
Isabel Wilkerson (2023)
Natasha Tretheway (2022)
Ta-Nehisi Coates (2021)
Alex Kotlowitz (2019)
Rabih Alameddine (2018)
Rita Dove (2017)
Marilynne Robinson (2016)
Edward P. Jones (2015)
Stuart Dybek (2014)
Art Spiegelman (2013)
Sara Paretsky (2012)
Edwidge Danticat (2011)
Barbara Ehrenreich (2010)
Dave Eggers (2009)
Scott Turow (2008)
Walter Mosley (2007)
E.L. Doctorow (2006)
Garrison Keillor (2005)
Jules Feiffer (2004)
Margaret Atwood (2003)
Grace Paley (2002)
August Wilson (2001)
John Hope Franklin (2000)
Robert Pinsky (1999)
Joseph Epstein (1998)
Cynthia Ozick (1997)
Isabel Allende (1996)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (1995)
Zbigniew Brzezinski (1994)
Garry Wills (1993)
Ralph Ellison (1992)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1991)
Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, Gwendolyn Brooks, Cyrus Colter, William
Maxwell, Studs Terkel (1990)
Susan Sontag (1989)