The BSA Awards recognize significant contributions to the field of Beat Studies. Only members of the BSA are able to make nominations. A work will only be eligible for a BSA Award if its nomination is seconded by another member of the BSA. Eligible works will have been published or delivered between January and December of the previous year. Works by people who are not currently BSA members can be nominated. Any person who has a work nominated for a BSA Award will be asked to join the BSA. Only members of the BSA can win a BSA Award. The BSA Board will determine the winners of the BSA Awards. Any BSA Board member who has a work nominated for a BSA Award will recuse themselves from voting in that particular category.
The primary goal of the BSA Awards is to recognize excellence in the field of Beat Studies. We are looking for well-researched and well-argued prose that contributes to scholarly discussion in our field, that demonstrates expertise on the topic under consideration, and that advances our understanding of Beat and Beat-associated authors and texts. We value the importance of peer review as a central tenet of the scholarly process. The BSA also recognizes that expertise and excellence could well be demonstrated by writing that has not been peer-reviewed in the traditional sense. We welcome nominations of both traditionally peer-reviewed and other kinds of work.
2026 BSA Awards
Best Graduate Student Paper/Presentation
“‘Who Scribbled All Night’: The Aesthetics of Cool in Ginsberg’s ‘Howl'” (The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture) by Daniel Wartham
Best Professional Article
“‘Jess ‘Maginary Lines in People’s Heads’: How Jack Kerouac’s Archive and His Problematic Novella Rewrite the Myths of On the Road” (Contemporary Literature) by Brett Sigurdson
Best Edited Scholarly Collection
Rethinking Kerouac: Afterlives, Continuities, Reappraisals (Bloomsbury Academic) edited by Erik Mortenson and Tomasz Sawczuk
Black Surrealist: The Legend of Ted Joans (Bloomsbury Academic) by Steven Belletto
Best Translation/ Scholarly Edition
Roosevelt After Inauguration Redux (Moloko) by William S. Burroughs, edited by Oliver Harris
2025 BSA Awards
Best Graduate Student Paper/Presentation
Nicholas Skaldetvind. “The Spontaneous Poetics in Kerouac’s Letters,” ALA Conference paper
Best Professional Article
Amor Kohli. “Kerouac and Blackness,” Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac, ed. Steven Belletto, Cambridge UP, 2024: 192-206.
Best Edited Scholarly Collection
Steven Belletto. Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac, Cambridge UP, 2024.
Best Monograph
Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo. Beat Myths in Literature: Revisionist Strategies in Beat Women. Routledge, 2024.
2024 BSA Awards
Best Graduate Student Paper/Presentation:
Elisa Sabbadin. “‘The American Non-Dream’: Addiction and the Grotesque Body in William S. Burroughs’ Works.” JAm It!: Journal of American Studies in Italy #8, 2023.
Best Professional Article:
Annie de Sassure. “Ancestral Uprooting and Literary Homecomings: Kerouac’s ‘Return’ to Britannay.” Journal of Beat Studies #11
Best Monograph:
Stevan M. Weine. Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness. Fordham UP, 2023.
Runner-Up: Polina Mackay. Beat Feminisms: Aesthetics, Literature, Gender, Activism. Routledge, 2022.