CAAPP Book Prize

Founded in 2020, the CAAPP Book Prize is a publishing partnership between the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and Autumn House Press with the goal of publishing and promoting a writer of African descent. The prize is awarded annually to a first or second book by a writer of African descent and is open to the full range of writers embodying African American, African, or African diasporic experiences. The book can be of any genre that is, or intersects with, poetry, including poetry, hybrid work, speculative prose, and/or translation. The winning manuscript will be published by Autumn House Press, and its author will be awarded $3,000.

2026 CAAPP Book Prize

• The reading period opens on November 5, 2025, and closes on December 15, 2025.
• Please submit a manuscript between 48-168 pages.
• Final Judge: Ladan Osman

Ladan Osman is the author of Exiles of Eden (2019), winner of a Whiting Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (2015), winner of the Sillerman Prize. Her poems have been translated into over 10 languages. Osman’s photographs and experimental media have been exhibited by Paris Photo, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Arts Incubator, Ύλη[matter]HYLE, and the New York African Film Festival. Her films include: The Ascendants, Sam Underground, The Fly Collectors, and Sun of the Soil. These films have played in numerous festivals and were awarded an ECU Award for Best Independent Documentary, and a Dikalo Award for Best Short Documentary, among other honors. She lives in New York.