$1,000 grand prize

Ross has been collecting for ten years, and his decade-long effort to build a "Black Collegiate Textbooks and Histories" collection is paying off. Ross provides not only a snapshot of African American history textbooks in use during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also the increasingly scarce histories of the HBCUs that taught with those same textbooks. It started in Fall 2014 with a visit to the campus bookstore at Morehouse College, where he had just started his first year. He asked staff for a history of the college, only to learn that the most recent one was some fifty years out of print. He walked up the street to Spelman College, asked for the same thing, and learned that its history, too, was out of print. Now numbering more than 200 books, Ross' distinctive engagement with a print culture specific to HBCUs aims to preserve these vanishing histories. While many of the judges' decisions are hard, this one was easy. One judge's comment sums it up well: "Man, Jordan just really ran away with it!"

$500 second prize

Unable to find in her local library the work of historians John Henrik Clarke and Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Baraka quickly realized that she would have to request from another library just about everything she wanted to read. So she set about building her own collection of largely vintage, and invariably hard-to-get, Black literature and memorabilia, "works that have fallen between the cracks and been forgotten." Her collection now includes more than 600 books and carries a name that reflects its community-driven mission, her desire to make available the otherwise unobtainable. The judges were only too happy to reward Baraka's participation in—as the collector herself puts it—"the legacy of independent Black preservation and memory work." "Love the outreach portion," one judge said, still more evidence that many of the best book collections are assembled for use.

$250 third prize

There's something undeniably irresistible about Mancini's global Pride and Prejudice collection. When just starting middle school, her father gave her his own childhood copy of the Jane Austen novel (in English). Some time later, Mancini found herself in France and picked up a copy in French. When her father's work began demanding international travel, he'd always ask Vera if he could bring home a souvenir. Her invariable request? "A copy of Pride and Prejudice in the local language." More than ten years later, some copies she has collected herself, while others came from friends and family on the move. Keep in mind, however, that there's one critical condition: The book must be purchased in person. More than a portrait of Pride and Prejudice's international presence, this is a collection that tells the many personal stories of international travel. The judges loved it. "I really liked the justification for focusing on a single title," one said. And for good reason. Mancini's justification demands patience and rewards method. She offers a potent corrective to an age of effortless international online shopping.

$1,000 grand prize

Salguero applied with a collection unlike anything the judges had seen. His “Interspecies Library” explores through artists’ books the interconnectedness of the planet’s many forms of life. Consider, for example, the complex relationships we humans have with fungi, bacteria, plants, and everything that roams the earth. More than this, it reflects humanity’s relationship with the environment at a time of climate crisis. It preserves for posterity a snapshot of our thoughts and emotions when multiple climatic tipping points feel impossibly close. International in scope but strictly focused, his 200-book collection is as much a global survey of the subject as it is the expression of one collector. The judges loved it. “His work is really interesting and he’s doing something very different,” one said. “So clever and inventive,” another remarked. Frankly, some were caught off guard by the originality of the concept. Follow him on Instagram (@interspecieslibrary) as he works to de-center the human.

$500 second prize

The judges were undeniably impressed, too, by Harris’s entry. Their multi-genre collection on queer Africa documents the experiences of queer Africans, whether through poetry, graphic novels, magazines, or any other manifestation of print. The collection is a triumph, a symbol of queer Africans’ ongoing advocacy for their right to exist. Beyond this vital representation, the collection underscores the possibilities and the importance of collecting material outside major western distribution channels. Harris has collected this material while living and traveling in Africa. “Amazon doesn’t have the range,” she writes. “American booksellers don’t have the context.” This is material that generally can’t be found anywhere else. The judges were eager to reward their vision and methods. It’s a “unique and compelling” collection story, one judge said. Given the rarity of the material and the sheer difficulty obtaining it, they’re keen to see how it develops.

$250 third prize

Severson has assembled an alluring collection on the British long 18th century. This may be familiar territory for many. She even has many of the names that might come to mind. Swift, Pope, and Sterne, for example. But she’s tapped into a focus and a method much less conventional. The former is to seek especially work by or about women and people of color, pushing against decades, if not centuries, of collecting traditions for the British 18th century. Her method is to seek books in the absolute worst condition imaginable. She speaks proudly of her “rat-eaten” and “water-logged” books. Severson frames this as something much richer than bare economy. In her own words, taking her focus and method together: “I feel like I am working against this devaluation of books as part and parcel of how I work against the devaluation of authors or subjects in my period based on their gender or race.” Fully cognizant of the enduring maxim that condition is everything, she admits being fascinated by “the tension between the durability of these books and the fragility of their value.” It’s a refreshing perspective, both in focus and method, and the judges were pleased to reward it.

$1,000 grand prize

Drawn into book collecting during the pandemic by rare editions of 20th-century Black women writers, Valderrama, facing rich price tags and seeking the thrill of a chase, pivoted to a focus both original and compelling: not first editions of Toni Morrison’s novels, but the overlooked corpus of books Morrison edited during her time in publishing, as well as those she blurbed. The judges loved it. “A really excellent point of view to be taking,” one said, “requiring her to do research, requiring her to look beyond just the author’s name.” All agreed it’s a collection teeming with “great choices” and “really good judgments.” Evidence of Valderrama’s thoughtfulness and passion is obvious. She is blazing a trail through a collecting landscape with no guide. We can’t wait to see where it goes.

$500 second prize

The judges spared few superlatives when discussing Shi’s collection. While it started with a focus on Chinese books from the diaspora in New York City, it’s expanded along with Shi’s own path through the world. After extensive travel through Europe, the collection focuses broadly on Western and European attitudes toward China, and especially toward communism during the Cold War. Shi finds in her collection cultural objects that bridge the East and West. One judge called hers a “scholarly application,” another recognized Shi’s “really solid focus on what she’s looking for and why.” It’s an expansive collection, vast in geographical scope, but with one guiding plan: “to continue exploring the history of the Western world through its imagination of China and of Chinese people,” to quote Shi herself.

$250 third prize

After some dozen moves, her (rather heavy) collection in tow each time, none can deny Dr. Saffold’s collecting commitment. Her collection focuses on African American literature, Street Lit and Hip Hop especially. And like its peripatetic collector, the collection has been doing some heavy lifting. Dr. Saffold is on faculty at the University of New Orleans and this collection is very much a working one, providing primary sources for her forthcoming book, Books & Beats: The Cultural Kinship of Street Lit and Hip Hop. The collection is a cornerstone of and complement to Saffold’s larger project, a digital archive of the bestseller lists from Essence Magazine, 1994-2010. It’s no surprise that she came in with a “really compelling essay,” according to one judge. She approaches her collection with “a very clear vision,” and through it “she’s adding to scholarship, she’s sharing the scholarship.” Like this prize’s namesake, Saffold has roots in Black entrepreneurship. Her application shared a vision of a bookstore, one that would help bring young people into the Black book trade. We think David Ruggles would approve. Obviously we’re here for it.