About The Harold Washington Literary Award and its 2025 Selection Committee.

Since 1989, Chicago’s Near South Planning Board and the Harold Washington Literary Award Selection Committee have come together to choose the recipient of this prestigious prize, named for the first Black mayor of Chicago, whose love of literature and commitment to diversity shaped and defined one of America’s great cities.

Presented at the opening of the annual Printers Row Lit Fest, past Harold Washington Literary Award-winners include Ray Bradbury; Gwendolyn Brooks; Susan Sontag; Saul Bellow; Kurt Vonnegut,Jr.; E.L. Doctorow; Doris Kearns Goodwin; Ralph Ellison; Walter Mosely; Isabel Allende; Studs Terkel; Tracy K. Smith and many others literary lights. The 2025 recipient of the award is Sandra Cisneros. 

The 2025 Harold Washington Literary Awards Selection Committee is co-chaired by Printers Row Lit Fest Founder Bette Cerf Hill and Center for Story & Witness Co-Founder Anne K. Ream. The committee, which brings together authors, publishers, educators, and literary opinion shapers committed to uplifting authors of global import while centering literature in Chicago’s cultural life, includes: