The Washington Monthly is delighted to welcome submissions for the 2026 Kukula Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Book Reviewing. The annual award, now in its 7th year, honors the memory of Kukula Kapoor Glastris, the magazine’s longtime and beloved books editor. It celebrates the kind of serious, public affairs-focused book reviews that Kuku loved best—and the talented people who practice this noble craft.
Nonfiction book reviewing is a vital form of journalism that transmits hard-won reporting, research, and ideas to policymakers and citizens who can’t possibly read more than a fraction of the important books published each year. But sadly, there are ever fewer venues for timely, substantive, thought-provoking reviews. The latest casualty—The Washington Post’s acclaimed Book World, which was eliminated in early February amid radical layoffs—was one of the last newspapers with a freestanding literary review section. At the Washington Monthly, we have valued book reviewing since our founding in 1969 and have prioritized it in our pages. The Kukula Award—the only annual journalism prize for nonfiction book criticism—is our modest effort to promote the broader field.
This spring, we will again honor two outstanding reviewers, chosen among ten exceptional finalists, for excellence in book reviewing published in 2025. Our judges give priority to reviews on works of politics, public affairs, history, and biography—themes central to this magazine’s brand of journalism. The application is easy and free. And the two top winners will each receive a $1,000 honorarium in recognition of their exemplary work. Please share your favorite reviews with us (or help spread the word to book reviewers you know and love) by this year’s deadline, Friday, March 27th. You’ll find all the eligibility details and the entry form here.
About Kukula Kapoor Glastris
The beloved and brilliant books editor of the Washington Monthly, Kukula (“Kuku” to her legions of friends and fans) made the book review section the home of some of the magazine’s best thinking and writing.
A keen editor and diplomatic manager of writers, she served as den mother and provisioner of delicious late-night home cooked meals to a generation of young Monthly journalists. “I’ve never met anyone whose combination of personal goodness, plus intellectual and professional abilities, exceeded Kukula’s,” journalist James Fallows wrote at The Atlantic.
Born in Tibet to an Indian diplomat who helped the Dalai Lama escape and then took the same route himself—on horseback over the Himalayas—with his family, including his two-year-old daughter. Kuku spent her childhood in India, Senegal, Syria, Germany, and Switzerland before moving to the United States to attend Indiana University. Over her wide-ranging career, Kuku was a TV talk-show producer in Chicago, a staffer at Ralph Nader’s Center for the Study of Responsive Law in Washington, and a reporter in the Chicago bureau of U.S. News & World Report.
Married 31 years to her life partner and best friend, Paul Glastris, Editor in Chief of the Washington Monthly, she viewed their children, Hope and Adam, as her greatest accomplishments.
Kukula died in August 2017 at age 59 of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. To honor her remarkable legacy, her family, friends, and colleagues contributed to a memorial fund that supports this book award. To learn more about Kukula’s life, please see Kuku: A Love Story.
