It’s Award Season: Literary Honors – and One Prize’s Impact on Social Change

This blog contributed by BookGive volunteer and advisory council member, Colleen Maleski.

We are in the middle of “awards season,” the several month period between November and February when the majority of major film awards ceremonies, including the controversial Golden Globes and Oscars, and some music awards, most notably the Grammys, take place. The Tonys and the Emmys, the two other major entertainment awards for theater and television, will take place in June and September, respectively.

But what about book awards? While there is no official “season” for literary recognitions, there are numerous honors that authors can earn. 

My first exposure to book awards was in elementary and middle school with gold and silver medals on book covers designating a Newbery or Caldecott award which recognizes authors and illustrators who made significant contributions to children’s literature. I grew up with books like Beverly Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw or Lois Lowry’s The Giver donning the Newbery medal and the art of Chris Van Allsburg in The Polar Express and Jumanji being recognized with the Caldecott. 

As an adult, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes are among the most recognizable. The Pulitzer, perhaps most known for its journalism honors, is also awarded in categories such as fiction, biography, or poetry while the Nobel, colloquially famous for its Peace Prize, also has a Prize in Literature that recognizes an outstanding body of work of an author. But there are so many other awards, of various levels of renown, that each have their own qualifying criteria such as: 

Geography: While some awards are national in scope, such as the National Book Awards in the U.S. or the Booker Prize in the U.K., others recognize authors from a particular state or region.  Colorado authors, for example, are eligible for honors such as the High Plains Book Awards, Reading the West, and the Colorado Book Awards. 

Genre: Some awards focus on specific book genres, including the Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy, the Orwell Prize for political writing, or the aptly-named Daggers for crime writing. Whether you prefer romance or speculative fiction, there are likely awards for new books in your favorite genre. 

Emerging Artists: There are recognitions for debut novels, such as The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and a prize specifically for second novels, the Encore Award. 

Format: Books may also win awards based on their format. The Harvey Awards, for example, have recognized outstanding comic books and graphic novels since 1988 while the Audie Awards have celebrated distinguished audiobooks and spoken word entertainment for 27 years. 

Unique or Diverse Identities: There are honors for authors who have been underrepresented in traditional awards, such as the New Voices Award for picture books by Black, Indigenous or authors of color (particularly important in an industry that has been criticized for its overwhelming whiteness) or the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which was started in response to the all-male 1991 Booker Prize shortlist. (Notably, women authors have traditionally received fewer writing honors than male authors in many of the most prestigious awards; for example, 17 of the 119 individuals who received the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1901 have been women. However, stories about women and girls are also less likely to win major awards, according to 15 years of data on the winners of six top prizes. Nicola Griffith who analyzed the data said, “The more prestigious the award, the more likely the subject of the narrative will be male.” Holistic data on the race and ethnicity of award winners is largely unavailable.) 

Subject: Some prizes honor books that tackle specific topics. Outdoor enthusiasts, for example, may be interested in the Jon Whyte or the Boardman Tasker Awards which both recognize works of mountain literature. Advocates for social change may check out the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction which promotes novels “that address issues of social justice” or the Aspen Words Literary Prize which recognizes “fiction with impact.” 

Some literary honors are being presented during this awards season, including the January 6th reveal of the Pacific Northwest Book Award Winners and two Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction were announced on January 29. Several longlists were also announced, including the PEN America’s Literary Awards and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. With its origins here in Colorado, let’s dive deeper into the goals of the Aspen Words award. 

“Fiction with Impact” 

The Aspen Words Literary Prize is a relatively young award, honoring its first winner – Mohsin Hamid for Exit West – in 2018. Since then, it has annually recognized an influential work of fiction that ”illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.” Which raises the question: what impact does fiction have on our society? 

While the value of fiction can sometimes be dismissed (likely rooted in the binary we are taught in elementary school that nonfiction is “true,” and therefore, by implication, fiction is “false”), research over the last few decades suggests that fiction does have positive social impacts. 

Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto – and a novelist himself that won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, has discovered that fiction “measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.” This happens because when we enter the simulated worlds of stories, we can see things from the character’s point of view, “honing our ability to feel with other people who, in ordinary life, might seem too foreign or too threatening to elicit our sympathies.” 

Emily Falk, a professor of communications, psychology, and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, similarly finds that stories can promote social change. When readers are “transported” into the story, they lower their defenses and engage emotionally, becoming more open to changing their beliefs – and behaviors. Many studies suggest that storytelling plays a role in reducing prejudice and discriminatory behavior towards marginalized groups and is more effective than solely factual texts at spurring action on social issues, such as climate change. 

A scene in one of the Aspen Words 2023 Longlist books illustrates the role that storytelling can play in social change. In Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, two aspiring artists (one an actor and one a writer) have a conversation with a college friend. The actor says, “[Artists] reflect our reality – past, present, and future. Without them, we wouldn’t have much gauge on whether we’ve progressed or not.” 

The college friend challenges, “What can your musicals reveal that a Census or Pew Report can’t?”

The actor responds, “A Census tells us the what but not the why. But even if we have the why… we still wouldn’t have the humanity that is essential to conveying the real message – that human lives are at stake.” 

But can stories influence real change? Perhaps not on their own, researchers say, but they can spark the thoughts and conversations that lead to it. Raymond Mar, a professor of psychology at York University, says that while “imagined experiences through narrative fiction… shape or change us,” there is a caveat. “It’s not a magic bullet – it’s an opportunity for change and growth.” 

And Falk also acknowledges the potential limitations of fiction in spurring change, saying, “Storytelling alone, of course, can’t produce structural changes in the justice system or create better policies aimed at health, the environment and other issues that affect our well-being. But that said, changing systems large or small has to start with effective communication. Listening to someone else’s story can give us a new way of seeing the world, motivate us to care, teach values and change minds.”

And those new ways of seeing the world can, in fact, spark change. David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s crime fiction novel, Winter Counts, illuminates the many shortcomings of the American criminal justice system that resulted from the 1885 Major Crimes Act through the story of a fictional vigilante on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. At a book club discussion at Fiction Beer Company in January, Weiden shared that he has received multiple calls and emails from members of Congress exploring an amendment to the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 to improve funding and resources for public safety in tribal communities. Weiden said, “Artists can lead the way to get issues in front of people,” noting that novels help create a dialogue that can create meaningful policy change. 

Find Your Own Award-Winning Read

Peruse awards that celebrate your literary interests and add a few new books to your to-read list. Look for those books (or others with medallions and honors on their covers) on your next visit to the Free Book Room or purchase titles at The Bookies, where 10% of book sales supports BookGive in expanding access to books across metro Denver. 

And try out your own perspective-taking by picking up a novel from the Aspen Words Literary Prize longlist or other diverse books that allow you to be transported into a story of someone who is different from you. Thanks to the generosity of 123 Colorado Gives Day donors in our $10,000 for 10,000 Diverse Books campaign, BookGive raised more than $12,000 to be able to provide more nonprofits, schools, and organizations with new diverse books that they and the community members they serve have been asking for. If you’re an organization in the metro Denver area that needs books, fill out our request form so we can deliver great reads that spark joy, spur conversation, and help us better understand ourselves and one another.