Trisha Baga, Laylah Ali, and Kay WalkingStick Among Anonymous Was A Woman Awardees

Each of the 15 artists, all over 40, will receive an unrestricted $50,000 cash award.

Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW), a nonprofit supporting women, trans, and non-binary artists above 40, named 15 artists working across various media in the United States to receive unrestricted $50,000 awards in recognition of their practices.

AWAW has been doling out awards since it was founded by artist Susan Unterberg in 1996 in response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to terminate individual-based grants. Recognizing the unattributed and undersung creative output of women artists, Unterberg named the program after a line from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929): “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”

The 2026 awardees include artists Laylah Ali, Marsha Pels, Beatriz Cortez, and Katherine Sherwood. Cherokee Nation painter Kay WalkingStick is the eldest recipient at 91 years old, whereas New York City-based video and installation artist Trisha Baga, 41, just made the program's cutoff.