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Sandra Cisneros, the acclaimed poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist, has been selected to receive the 2025 Harold Washington Literary Award.
This prestigious award, named for Chicago’s first Black mayor, will be presented by Chicago’s Near South Planning Board, kicking off Printers Row Lit Fest, one of the largest literary and ideas festivals in the United States. Past recipients of the Harold Washington Literary Award, launched in 1989, include Isabel Allende, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Tracy K. Smith and Susan Sontag, among many other literary lights.
About Sandra Cisneros.
An extraordinary literary talent who is also a devoted literary citizen, Cisneros - who was born and raised in Chicago and is an iconic figure in Chicana literature - has received numerous awards for her writing, including the National Medal of Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, and PEN America’s PEN/Nabokov Award.
“Even though I don’t live in Chicago anymore, its stories still live in me,” says Cisneros. “It’s a great honor to be receiving the Harold Washington Literary Award, which has been given to so many wonderful writers from all over, and from my hometown,” she adds.
“Sandra Cisneros is a versatile and adventurous writer of profound compassion, exquisite imagination, sharp wit, valiant candor, and deep perception whose work is read and cherished the world over,” says Booklist Editor in Chief Donna Seaman, a member of the 2025 Harold Washington Literary Award Selection Committee.
“Sandra Cisneros asks us to think in new ways about race, gender, class, and the pain of being treated as a stranger in one’s own land. And she reminds us that bearing witness can be a powerful political act,” says Center for Story & Witness Co-Founder Anne K. Ream, who co-chaired the Selection Committee with Printers Row Lit Fest founder Bette Cerf Hill.
Congratulations, Sandra Cisneros! We are grateful for your powerful, purposeful, and beautiful literary voice. And special thanks to the 2025 Harold Washington Literary Awards Selection Committee, including Center for Story & Witness Co-Founder R. Clifton Spargo, for your commitment to centering literature from Chicago, and across the globe.
See you at the Harold Washington Literary Awards!
THE HAROLD WASHINGTON LITERARY AWARDS
Presented by the Near South Planning Board
Thursday, September 4, 2025
The Union League of Chicago
65 West Jackson, Chicago, IL
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