The America Award is a lifetime achievement literary award for international writers. It describes itself as a modest attempt at providing alternatives to the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was first presented in 1994. The award does not entail any prize money.^[1][2] It is sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Educational Project, Inc., in loving memory of Anna Fahrni, and by the publisher Green Integer.

Each year, the judges comprise a rotating panel of six to eight American poets, prose writers, playwrights and literary critics. The chairman is Douglas Messerli.^[3]

• 1994 – Aimé Cesaire [Martinique]
• 1995 – Harold Pinter [UK]
• 1996 – José Donoso [Chile] (awarded prior to his death)
• 1997 – Friederike Mayröcker [Austria]
• 1998 – Rafael Alberti [Spain] (awarded prior to his death)
• 1999 – Jacques Roubaud [France]
• 2000 – Eudora Welty [USA]
• 2001 – Inger Christensen [Denmark]
• 2002 – Peter Handke [Austria]
• 2003 – Adonis [Syria/Lebanon]
• 2004 – José Saramago [Portugal]
• 2005 – Andrea Zanzotto [Italy]
• 2006 – Julien Gracq (Louis Poirier) [France]
• 2007 – Paavo Haavikko [Finland]
• 2008 – John Ashbery [USA]
• 2009 – Günter Kunert [Germany]
• 2010 – Javier Marías [Spain]
• 2011 – Ko Un [South Korea]
• 2012 – Ivo Michiels [Belgium]
• 2013 – Reiner Kunze [GDR/Germany]
• 2014 – László Krasznahorkai [Hungary]
• 2015 – Edward Albee [USA]
• 2016 – César Aira [Argentina]
• 2017 – Tom Stoppard [Czechoslovakia/UK]
• 2018 – Haruki Murakami [Japan]
• 2019 – Nicole Brossard [Canada]
• 2020 – Mario Vargas Llosa [Peru]
• 2021 – Rosmarie Waldrop [Germany/USA]
• 2022 – Gerhard Rühm [Austria]
• 2023 – Ismail Kadare [Albania]