NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize

The NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize, given biennially and administered by the Graduate School of Arts & Science, honors an American writer of artistic literary narrative nonfiction whose published book or books are of exceptional quality and societal import, and who is expected to produce additional highly significant work in subsequent years. 

The winner is selected by an independent panel of judges considering nominations from distinguished people drawn from many areas of American literary life, including prominent scholars, writers, librarians, and independent booksellers whose identity is not known to the judges. 

The prize includes a cash award of $100,000. By supporting writers who engage large readerships with subjects derserving of more attention, the Prize aims to make lasting impact on the wider culture.  

The 2022 prize was awarded to Mary Gabriel, whom the judges chose “for her exceptional history of the mid-century American art world and the five women artists now increasingly central to our larger picture of those decades, its artistic styles, relationships, and fates.” 

Ninth Street Women is Gabriel’s most recent book, published in 2018. It is a five-part biography of postwar abstract expressionists Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler. The work “captures a New York art world on the cusp—or the precipice—of extraordinary celebrity and extravagant prices,” the New York Times wrote in its review, noting the work is “as complicated and capacious as the lives it depicts.” Gabriel has created “an affectionate tribute to the underappreciated women of America’s avant-garde,” as reviewed by Publishers Weekly. The Wall Street Journal noted: “It’s no mean feat to breathe life into five very different and very brave women, none of whom gave a whit about conventional mores.”

Gabriel is the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution, published in 2011. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored and The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone.

The Axinn Foundation is named for Don Axinn, whom Mark Hamer of the Axinn Foundation notes was a successful businessman who loved to write and read: "He cared a great deal about people and writing. Although he was not a professional writer, he wrote every day and he thought his creativity had something to do with his success in business. Don had the pleasure of reading his poetry on one memorable evening at NYU. The Trustees of the Axinn Foundation felt it was fitting that the NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize, aimed at encouraging mid-career writers of extraordinary talent, be created in his name, so as to honor and support writers of literary narrative nonfiction books that make a difference.”