Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominees and Winning Books
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Introduced in 2001 The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers. In tribute to Zora Neale Hurston, the Foundation has renamed the awards for each category for Fiction, Nonfiction, Debut Fiction, and Poetry – The Zora. These awards are presented at the annual The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards.
Each October, the award winners are celebrated during the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards that draws hundreds of literary stars, readers, representatives of the publishing industry, the arts, media, politics, and academia. Learn more at the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s website.
4 Books Honored by the Hurston/Wright Foundation in 2007
Winner – Debut Fiction
Ancestor Stones
List Price: $14.00
Grove Press (Sep 10, 2007)
Fiction, Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN: 9780802143211Publisher: Grove Atlantic, Inc.
Book Description:
Aminatta Forna, whose moving and gorgeously written memoir garnered international attention, has seamlessly turned her hand to fiction in Ancestor Stones a powerful, sensuous novel that beautifully captures Africa s past century and her present, and the legacy that her daughters take with them wherever they live. Abie returns home from England to West Africa to visit her family after years of civil war, and to reclaim the family plantation, Kholifa Estates, formerly owned by her grandfather. There to meet her are her aunts: Asana, Mariama, Hawa, and Serah, and so begins her gathering of the family and the country s history through the tales of her aunts. Asana, lost twin and head wife s daughter. Hawa, motherless child and manipulator of her own misfortune. Mariama, who sees what lies beyond. And Serah, follower of a Western made dream. Set against the backdrop of a nation s descent into chaos, it is the take a family and four women s attempts to alter the course of their own destiny. A wonderful achievement recalling The God of Small Things and The Joy Luck Club, it establishes Aminatta Forna as a gifted novelist.
Aminatta Forna, whose moving and gorgeously written memoir garnered international attention, has seamlessly turned her hand to fiction in Ancestor Stones a powerful, sensuous novel that beautifully captures Africa s past century and her present, and the legacy that her daughters take with them wherever they live. Abie returns home from England to West Africa to visit her family after years of civil war, and to reclaim the family plantation, Kholifa Estates, formerly owned by her grandfather. There to meet her are her aunts: Asana, Mariama, Hawa, and Serah, and so begins her gathering of the family and the country s history through the tales of her aunts. Asana, lost twin and head wife s daughter. Hawa, motherless child and manipulator of her own misfortune. Mariama, who sees what lies beyond. And Serah, follower of a Western made dream. Set against the backdrop of a nation s descent into chaos, it is the take a family and four women s attempts to alter the course of their own destiny. A wonderful achievement recalling The God of Small Things and The Joy Luck Club, it establishes Aminatta Forna as a gifted novelist.
Winner – Fiction
All Aunt Hagar’s Children: Stories
List Price: $14.00
Grove Press (Sep 10, 2007)
Fiction, Paperback, 336 pages
- NYT Best Book of the 21st Century
- Selected for 1 Book Club Reading Lists
- Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Honored Book 2007
ISBN: 9780060557577Publisher: Grove Atlantic, Inc.
Book Description:
Three years after the publication of his much-heralded, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Known World, Edward P. Jones returned with an elegiac, luminous masterpiece, All Aunt Hagar s Children. In these fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, Jones resurrects the minor characters in his first award-winning story collection, Lost in the City. The result is vintage Jones: powerful, magisterial tales that showcase his ability to probe the complexities and tenaciousness of the human spirit. All Aunt Hagar s Children is filled with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is the city s ordinary citizens, not its power brokers, who most concern Jones. Here, everyday people who thought the values of the South would sustain them in the North find "that the cohesion born and nurtured in the south would be but memory in less than two generations."
Three years after the publication of his much-heralded, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Known World, Edward P. Jones returned with an elegiac, luminous masterpiece, All Aunt Hagar s Children. In these fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, Jones resurrects the minor characters in his first award-winning story collection, Lost in the City. The result is vintage Jones: powerful, magisterial tales that showcase his ability to probe the complexities and tenaciousness of the human spirit. All Aunt Hagar s Children is filled with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is the city s ordinary citizens, not its power brokers, who most concern Jones. Here, everyday people who thought the values of the South would sustain them in the North find "that the cohesion born and nurtured in the south would be but memory in less than two generations."
Winner – Nonfiction
Unbowed: A Memoir
List Price: $14.00
Grove Press (Sep 10, 2007)
Fiction, Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN: 9780307275202Publisher: Grove Atlantic, Inc.
Book Description:
In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country. Infused with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai s remarkable story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspire generations to come.
In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country. Infused with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai s remarkable story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspire generations to come.
Winner – Poetry
Teahouse Of The Almighty (National Poetry)
List Price: $14.00
Grove Press (Sep 10, 2007)
Fiction, Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN: 9781566891936Publisher: Grove Atlantic, Inc.
Book Description:
A National Poetry Series winner, chosen by Edward Sanders.
What power. Smith s poetry is all poetry. And visceral. Her poems get under the skin of their subjects. Their passion and empathy, their real worldliness, are blockbuster. Marvin Bell
I was weeping for the beauty of poetry when I reached the end of the final poem. Edward Sanders, National Poetry Series judge
From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation s premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned cele-bration of poetry s liberating power.
A National Poetry Series winner, chosen by Edward Sanders.
What power. Smith s poetry is all poetry. And visceral. Her poems get under the skin of their subjects. Their passion and empathy, their real worldliness, are blockbuster. Marvin Bell
I was weeping for the beauty of poetry when I reached the end of the final poem. Edward Sanders, National Poetry Series judge
From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation s premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned cele-bration of poetry s liberating power.