Lannan Foundation has awarded a Cultural Freedom Prize to historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz for the achievements of her lifetime of tireless work. Professor Dunbar-Ortiz, who is professor emerita at California State University—East Bay, is the author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (City Lights Publishers, 2018), about the racist roots of the second amendment; An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (2014); and eleven other books. She is an activist with the global indigenous people’s movement for national sovereignty, international recognition, and environmental rights. Professor Dunbar-Ortiz has also been involved in social movements for women’s equality, and for the rights of oppressed nations in Central America during the region’s civil wars.

Shane McCrae, Literary Award for Poetry

Rickey Laurentiis, Literary Fellowship for Poetry

Roy Scranton, Literary Fellowship for Fiction

Natalie Scenters-Zapico, Literary Fellowship for Poetry

Mai Der Vang, Literary Fellowship for Poetry

Javier Zamora, Literary Fellowship for Poetry

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Duke University history scholar Nancy MacLean (Viking 2017) has won the 2017 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book.

Established in 2014, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for An Especially Notable Book honors nonfiction works of particular relevance to the current historical moment. The award recognizes writers whose work is of particular scholarly or journalistic quality, and also has purpose in providing ideological tools to inform and support struggles for cultural freedom and social, economic, and racial justice.