Book Award Nominations

Books whose research and/or writing engage Asian American Studies, and whose copyright publication date falls between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022 are eligible. Authors of nominated titles should be current members of AAAS, with the exception of authors of creative writing submissions. Edited collections are not eligible for consideration.

Any individual or press can nominate a book for an award, including authors themselves. We only ask that authors considering self-nomination reach out to their publisher before the nominations deadline, or vice versa, so AAAS does not receive duplicate nominations.

Nominations are due July 31, 2023 at 11:59pm Pacific. Physical books must be POSTMARKED by this date.

In addition to recognition of their work by AAAS, awardees are honored at the AAAS Awards Banquet, which takes place during the AAAS annual meeting. The next annual meeting will be in Seattle, Washington in April 2024. Recipients will also have their book prominently displayed at a book awards table at the conference, receive an etched plaque commemorating the book and authorship, and receive publicity via the AAAS website and newsletter.

The AAAS Book Awards is an opportunity for a book to be publicly recognized as making an outstanding achievement in one of the categories below. AAAS is committed to respecting scholars’ and writers’ self-identification of their scholarship and/or creative work. Nominators are therefore free to nominate books for any category below, regardless of how the book is categorized in other venues or the training or degree of the author. However, books can only be nominated in one category. The categories are as follows:

• Creative Writing: Poetry 

AAAS welcomes work written primarily in poetic forms, which encompass the material and aesthetic qualities of language, and that can be thought of as lyrical, narrative, epic, dramatic, documentary, and much more.

• Creative Writing: Prose

AAAS welcomes work written primarily in prose, and taking the form of memoir, a novel, a collection of short stories or creative essays, creative nonfiction, and much more. 

• History

AAAS welcomes work that contributes to a historically-informed understanding within Asian American Studies, and/or work that challenges the understanding of history, historiography, or historical knowledge production. 

• Literary Studies

AAAS welcomes work that contributes to an understanding of Asian American literature and/or poetry, and/or that makes an intervention in how we understand literary texts, forms and/or literary production. 

• Media, Performance, and Visual Studies

AAAS welcomes work that contributes to an understanding of Asian American media, performance, and/or visual artifacts, broadly construed. Suggested subfields include but are not limited to Anthropology/Sociology of Media, Art, Art History, Critical Media Studies, Communication, Dance, Ethnomusicology, Performance Studies, Theater, Visual Anthropology, and Visual Culture. 

• Social Sciences

AAAS welcomes work that contributes to a qualitative and/or quantitative understanding of Asian American social or cultural life, and/or the production of social scientific knowledge. Suggested subfields include but are not limited to Anthropology, Demography, Economics, Education, Law/Legal Studies, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology. 

• Multidisciplinary or Interdisciplinary Approaches

AAAS welcomes work whose primary intervention is the combination of various disciplines or its impact on multiple disciplines. We recommend this category for books that nominators would like to recognize specifically for their interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary qualities, rather than their contribution to one of the fields or areas listed above. 

Please note that although “Multidisciplinary or Interdisciplinary Approaches” is a separate category, nominators are encouraged to submit multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary scholarship in any category. Similarly, nominators are encouraged to submit hybrid poetry-prose creative writing to either the prose or poetry category. 

Each nomination submission must provide: author contact information, headshot, and 2-page cv; publication information and publisher contact information; a 200-word description of the book; the book cover image; and a 200-word rationale for its inclusion in the category in which it is nominated. 

Nominators must also ship four (4) copies of the nominated title to the address below, with a postmark date no later than July 31, 2023 AND an electronic/digital version of the nominated title to Tamara Ko at [email protected]. Books without a specified nomination category will not be forwarded for review. Please submit one nomination form per nominated title. 

Attention to:
Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS)
℅ Tamara Ko
615 South Palatine Hill Road MSC 187
Portland, OR 97219

Book Award judges are tenured scholars, as well poets & writers, who specialize in their respective fields. Judges are approved by the AAAS Board and are organized into subcommittees by the AAAS Book Awards committee, which oversees the entire book awards process.

Award recipients and publishers will be notified in January 2024.

Please submit nominations to our new website, accessible here. If possible, please also print and submit the nomination form along with your shipment of books.