The Maya Angelou Book Award reading committee has selected five finalists for the fifth annual national award, which is presented by the Kansas City Public Library, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and five other Missouri universities. 

The finalists, chosen from more than 200 submitted poetry collections, are: 

• Cloud Missives is Haudenosaunee poet Kenzie Allen’s debut collection. The work serves as an investigation, a manifestation, and a celebration of the body, of what we make and remake, of the self, and of the heart. 

• Ward Toward by Cindy Juyoung Ok is the 118th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets and her debut collection. Ok explores the private codes used by institutions of constraint. 

• In Besaydoo, Sierra Leonean American Yalie Saweda Kamara does not separate the worlds of the living and the dead, the past or the present, but acts as a witness to all. She tells those tales in the space where Krio, English, and French meet. 

• Black Bell by Alison C. Rollins ushers readers between 18th century and futuristic fabulations, cataloging individual experiences and collective memory along the way. The collection is a multimedia meditation on freedom seeking. 

• Primordial investigates the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam. Poet Mai Der Vang writes about the trauma and resilience of the Hmong people and the plight of the saola, an endangered animal of the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam. 

The winner will be announced at the annual Writers for Readers fundraiser dinner on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The recipient receives $10,000 and conducts a book tour of the participating universities. 

Named for acclaimed, Missouri-born memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, the prize celebrates contemporary writers whose work demonstrates their commitment to social justice. It alternates annually between poetry and fiction, going this year to the author of a work of fiction. 

The award was established in 2020 by the Kansas City Public Library, UMKC, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri State University, and Northwest Missouri State, Truman State, and Southeast Missouri State universities. 

Read about the Maya Angelou Book Award. 

Buy a ticket to the Writers for Readers event on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at 6 p.m.