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American author Hanif Abdurraqib has won the 2026 Weston International Award.
The $75,000 prize is a companion to the existing Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, which is awarded annually to a Canadian author for a single work of nonfiction.
The Weston International Award recognizes the career achievement of an international author for a body of nonfiction work. Eligible international authors must have published at least three books of outstanding literary merit, in the genre of nonfiction, that are written in English or else widely available in translation.
Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist and cultural critic known for his writing on music, sports, Black life and social justice.
His books include There’s Always This Year, about basketball, race and America, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award, A Little Devil in America, about Black performance, which won the Carnegie Medal, and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, a music-infused essay collection.
His poetry collections are The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster.
Abdurraqib was a MacArthur Fellow in 2021 and a Windham-Campbell Prize winner in 2024. He is from Columbus, Ohio.
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Abdurraquib was selected as the Weston International Award winner by an international advisory committee and a Canadian jury.
The international advisory committee was PBS arts correspondent Jeffery Brown, British Iranian author and literary editor of The Guardian David Shariatmadari, and Nigerian author, literary festival director and publisher Lola Shoneyin.
The Canadian jury was author and professor Dean Jobb, nonfiction writer and filmmaker Chase Joynt, author Tess McWatt, author and scholar Christina Sharpe and author Jenny Heijun Wills.
“The jury was enchanted by Hanif Abdurraqib’s ability to create a chorus of Black life through the shared languages of performance, music, and athleticism, that is utterly and authorially distinct,” said the jury in a press statement. “Whether writing on basketball, dance, music or policing and violence, he calls out falsehoods, centres the marginalized, and affirms that ‘they can’t kill us until they kill us.’
“Across Abdurraqib’s masterful and genre-bending work, the local and specific are spun inward and outward in ways that manifest a deep connection to people, place, and the world. He combines searing insights into Blackness and social inequality in the United States with themes of love and belonging, life and death.”
Abdurraqib will give a talk at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on Sept. 14 to discuss his career and work. Tickets are available on the Weston International Award website.
Last year’s winner was American author Leslie Jamison.
The Writers’ Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that seeks to advance, nurture and celebrate Canadian writers and writing. Its programming includes 11 national literary awards, financial grants, career development initiatives for emerging writers and a writers’ retreat.
It was founded in 1976 by Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson, Margaret Laurence and David Young.
