Announcing the 2025 Sarasvati Award for Best Nonfiction Book

The Sarasvati Book Award solicits scholarly nonfiction books published during 2022-2024 in the fields of goddess studies/women and mythology. Named for the Hindu goddess of learning and the creative arts, the award is given by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology to honor outstanding scholarship and presentation. The award will be presented during ASWM’s 2025 conference in Tucson Arizona.

Submissions and book copies must be received by the Awards Committee no later than February 1, 2025. Books must be published in print, rather than only in e-book format. Nominations must come directly from the publisher; authors should contact their publishers to ask them to submit a work for this award. Each publisher may nominate one work published in 2022-2024. Anthologies and self-published books are not eligible for this award.

 Publishers may contact submissions@womenandmyth.org .

Previous winners of the Sarasvati Award for Nonfiction:

  • 2022: Eruptions of Inanna:  Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn (Nightboat Books)
  • 2018: Sheela na gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power by Starr Goode (Inner Traditions)
  • 2016: The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor (Princeton)
  • 2014: The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology and the Origins of European Dance by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (Norton)
  • 2012: Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor Mair (Cambria Press)