April 3, 2025
The Association of American Publishers Announces 2025 PROSE Award Winners for Excellence and the R.R. Hawkins Award
University of California Press, Elsevier Inc., and Princeton University Press honored with PROSE Awards for Excellence
Top PROSE Awards Honor, the R.R. Hawkins Award, goes to University of California Press’ Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border by Ieva Jusionyte
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has announced the four Area of Excellence winners of its annual PROSE Awards, recognizing outstanding scholarly publications in four categories: Biological & Life Sciences, Humanities, Physical Sciences & Mathematics, and Social Sciences.
AAP has awarded the prestigious R.R. Hawkins Award —the top honor of the PROSE Awards —to University of California Press for Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border by Ieva Jusionyte.
“We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the University of California Press, Elsevier Inc., and Princeton University Press, whose exceptional entries demonstrate groundbreaking scholarship and a dedication to publishing excellence,” commented Syreeta Swann, Chief Operating Officer at AAP. “We also extend a thank you to our esteemed panel of judges, who year-after-year express unwavering commitment to evaluating submissions with care and expertise, as well as all entrants who continue to advance the scholarly publishing community.”
R.R. Hawkins Award Winner
“University of California Press is honored by the recognition of Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border as the 2025 R.R. Hawkins Award Winner. Building on her experience as an emergency responder in the borderlands and over five years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in both Mexico and the United States, Ieva Jusionyte has crafted a truly unique work of narrative nonfiction that connects with readers on a deeply human level,” commented Erich van Rijn, the Executive Director of the University of California Press. “We are thankful to the judges and the PROSE Awards program for fostering an engaged and far-reaching scholarly publishing community.”
“Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border is a novel work that expertly intertwines the experiences of five individuals located on the Mexico-U.S. border whose lives are inextricably linked to guns, with adept anthropological, cultural, and ethnographic study, culminating in a rigorous story of how gun policies and gun violence reverberate far beyond the border,” commented PROSE Awards Chief Judge Nigel Fletcher-Jones, PhD.
Find below a small collection of excerpts from Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border:
On the meaning of Exit Wounds, literally and figuratively:
“By the time I began research on gun trafficking, several years had passed since my last shift on an ambulance, but what I was doing felt familiar—I was looking for exit wounds. Although firearms injure and kill individuals, whose bodies absorb the lethal force of the projectile, gunshot wounds reverberate through the community. The impact of a bullet exceeds the punctures and scars it leaves on the human body, penetrating social fabric, creating collective damage shared by families, neighborhoods, and passed from the present to future generations.”
On research methods and ethnography:
“…I made two strategic decisions that guided this project. The first was dispersing fieldwork temporally and spatially over several years and a handful of sites. I began with the government and the military in Mexico City, then moved to Monterrey, Nuevo León, to work with people who engaged in gun trafficking and gun violence, not returning to speak to state officials again. I conducted research in the United States with agents pursuing gun traffickers in Arizona instead of Texas, which would have been too close to the region in Mexico—Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Nuevo León—where I met with members of organized crime. I did this so that I would not cross legal and ethical lines and not, even unintentionally, violate anyone’s trust. My second decision was to embrace bricolage as a narrative technique and let structure—fractured, intertwining storylines and shifts between ethnographic present and linear sequences of events—be part of the argument. These ethical and stylistic choices enabled proximity while allowing for a degree of distance, which I have found necessary when writing about violence.”
2025 PROSE Excellence Winners are as follows:
R.R Hawkins Award Winner & PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences
- Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence across the Border, University of California Press, by Ieva Jusionyte
PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological & Life Sciences
- The Mindful Health Care Professional: A Path to Provider Wellness and Patient-centered Care, Elsevier Inc., by Dr. Carmelina D’Arro
PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities
- Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States, University of California Press, by Matthew D. Morrison
PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences & Mathematics
- The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness, Princeton University Press, by Leslie Valiant
About the PROSE Awards
Since 1976, the AAP’s PROSE Awards have recognized publishers who produce books, journals, and digital products of extraordinary merit that make a significant contribution to a field of study.
During the 2025 PROSE Awards cycle, a panel of 28 PROSE Awards Judges selected 101 finalists and 37 category winners. Of the 37 exceptional category winners, today’s PROSE Award for Excellence Winners and R.R. Hawkins Award Winner illustrate the highest standards of scholarly publishing, contributing innovative research and impactful scholarship to their respective areas of study.
More information about the 2025 PROSE Awards can be found here.