The In the Margins Award, established in 2013, is an annual literary award presented to fiction and nonfiction "self published books by, for and about people of color living in the margins."[1] The primary audience of the books is generally individuals aged 9-21 who are Black, Indigenous People of Color; "youth from a street culture," "youth in restrictive custody," and/or "youth who are reluctant readers."[2]
The In the Margins Award was established as part of the Library Services for Youth in Custody but since 2017, has operated independently.[3]
| 2014 | Fiction | Survivor | [4] | |
| and Daniel Lafance (Illus.) | War Brothers: The Graphic Novel | |||
| Criminal | ||||
| Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass | ||||
| Good Kings, Bad Kings | ||||
| No Matter What | ||||
| Pieces of Me | ||||
| Anybody’s Daughter | ||||
| Nonfiction | ||||
| From Crack to College and Vice Versa | ||||
| 2015 | Fiction | The Lure | [5] | |
| Anatomy of a Girl Gang | ||||
| How It Went Down | ||||
| When I Was the Greatest | ||||
| Ruby: Between the Cracks (Volume 1) | ||||
| Nonfiction | From God’s Monster to the Devil’s Angel | |||
| Left for Dead | ||||
| The High Price I Had to Pay 2: Sentenced to 30 Years as a Nonviolent, First Time Offender | ||||
| Lionheart: Coming from Where I’m From | ||||
| The Griots of Oakland: Voices from the African American Oral History Project | ||||
| 2016 | Fiction | The Triangle: A Year on the Ground with New York’s Bloods and Crips | [6] | |
| Dime | ||||
| Little Peach | ||||
| The Outside Circle | ||||
| Tattooed Teardrops | ||||
| Nonfiction | America’s Massacre: The Audacity of Despair and a Message of Hope | |||
| The Boy Who Carried Bricks: A True Story of Survival | ||||
| Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration | ||||
| Girls In Justice | ||||
| Ghetto Brother: Warrior to Peacemaker | ||||
| 2017 | Fiction | Little Miss Somebody | [7] | |
| American Flowers | ||||
| Nonfiction | Aging Out: A True Story | |||
| Girl in Pieces | ||||
| Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap | ||||
| Teenage Degenerate | ||||
| Dear Yvette | ||||
| Other Broken Things | ||||
| The Truth | ||||
| The Untold Story of the Real Me: Young Voices from Prison | ||||
| 2018 | Fiction | Beacon House Writers. K. Crutcher (Ed.) with Z. Gatti (Design) | The Day Tajon Got Shot | [8] |
| The Biker’s Brother | ||||
| The Pain Eater | ||||
| Jumped In | ||||
| with John Jennings and Stacey Robinson (Illus.) | I am Alfonso Jones | |||
| Blood Brothers | ||||
| White Flight | ||||
| Nonfiction | One Cut | |||
| and Stacey Debono (Eds.) and Glenn Adhama (Illus.) | 100 Things Every Black Girl Should Know | |||
| Poetry | Broken Flowers: And Other Stairways to Heaven | |||
| 2019 | Fiction | Where the Dead Sit Talking | [9] [10] | |
| Queenpin | ||||
| Hard Knocks High: Darkskins and Redbones | ||||
| , Andrew Donkin, and Giovanni Rigano (Illus.) | Illegal | |||
| Nonfiction | and Sue Jeweler | Tell Me About When Moms and Dads Go to Jail: Tell Me About Jail | ||
| and Sue Jeweler | Tell Me About When Moms and Dads Come Home From Jail: Tell Me About Jail | |||
| Motherless Child: A Journey of Growing Up and Forgiving | ||||
| Raw: My Journey Into the Wu-Tang | ||||
| Where the Dead Sit Talking | ||||
| Hey, Kiddo | ||||
| and Santiago Casares | Voces sin Fronteras: Our Stories, Our Truth | |||
| The Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary | ||||
| 2020 | Fiction | and Natasha Donavan | Surviving the City | [11] |
| Bloody Seoul | ||||
| and Fabricio Vanden Broeck | My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando tres Fronteras | |||
| Dreams on Fire | ||||
| You Who Enter Here | ||||
| Nonfiction | and Ashley Cathey | When Hip Hop Met Poetry: An Urban Love Story | ||
| and Gary Leach | Colorblind: A Story on Racism | |||
| , Debbie Reese, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz | An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People (ReVisioning American History for Young People) | |||
| Free Lunch | ||||
| What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger | ||||
| 2021 | Fiction | Why is Kristyn a Kutter? | [12] | |
| The Comeback: I Raised These Streets | ||||
| , Scott B. Henderson, and Donavan Yaciuk | The Reckoner Rise: Breakdown | |||
| and Keisha Morris | For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World | |||
| Nonfiction | Into the Streets: A Young Person’s Visual History of Protest in the United States | |||
| and Mika Song | Ho'onani: Hula Warrior | |||
| and Asha Bendele | When They Call You a Terrorist: A Story of Black Lives Matter and the Power to Change the World | |||
| Everything I Been Through | ||||
| 2022 | Fiction |