James Baldwin (1978)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1979)
John Oliver Killens (1980)
Toni Cade Bambara (1981)
Paule Marshall (1981)
Toni Morrison (1981)
Sterling A. Brown (1982)
Margaret Walker Alexander (1983)
Ralph W. Ellison (1984)
Raymond R. Patterson (1986)
Dennis Brutus (1987)
Alice Walker (1988)
Amiri Baraka (1989)
Alice Childress (1990)
Maya Angelou (1991)
August Wilson (1992)
Chinua Achebe (1993)
Ernest Gaines (1994)
Ishmael Reed (1995)
Nikki Giovanni (1996)
Albert Murray (1997)
George Lamming (1998)
Sonia Sanchez (1999)
Wole Soyinka (2000)
Jayne Cortez (2001)
Derek Walcott (2002)
Lucille Clifton (2003)
James A. Emanuel (2003)
Sekou Sundiata (2003)
Arnold Rampersad (2003)
John Edgar Wideman (2004)
Octavia Butler (2005)
Gregory H. Williams (2008)
Edwidge Danticat (2011)
Walter Mosley (2014)

Jacqueline Woodson (2015)
Ntozake Shange (2016)

Zadie Smith (2017)

Hilton Als (2018)

Rita Dove (2019)

Michael Eric Dyson (2020)
Jamaica Kincaid (2021)

Lynn Nottage (2023)

Colson Whitehead (2024)