Bernice L. McFadden, Flores A. Forbes Win American Book Awards

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BEFORE COLUMBUS FOUNDATION

The Raymond House • 655 -13th Street • Suite 302 • Oakland, California 94612
www.beforecolumbusfoundation.com

 

August 4, 2017

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Justin Desmangles, 916-425-7916

 

The Before Columbus Foundation announces the

Winners of the Thirty-Eighth Annual

AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS

Ceremonies, October 22, 2017, 12:00–2:30 p.m.

 

Oakland, CA—The Before Columbus Foundation announces the Winners of the Thirty-Eighth Annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS. The 2017 American Book Award winners will be formally recognized on Sunday, October 22nd, from 12:00-2:30 p.m. at the SF Jazz Center, Joe Henderson Lab, 201 Franklin Street (at Fell), San Francisco, CA. This event is open to the public.

 

The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity, the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. The Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers.

 

The 2017 American Book Award Winners are:

 

Rabia Chaudry

Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial (St. Martin's Press)

 

Flores A. Forbes

Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration (Skyhorse Publishing)

 

Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing (Knopf) Holly Hughes Passings (Expedition Press) Randa Jarrar Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (Sarabande Books)

 

Bernice L. McFadden

The Book of Harlan (Akashic Books)

 

Brian D. McInnes

Sounding Thunder: The Stories of Francis Pegahmagabow (Michigan State University Press)

 

Patrick Phillips

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America (W. W. Norton & Company)

 

Vaughn Rasberry

Race and the Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination (Harvard University Press)

 

Marc Anthony Richardson

Year of the Rat (Fiction Collective Two)

 

Shawna Yang Ryan
Green Island (Knopf)

 

Ruth Sergel

See You in the Streets: Art, Action, and Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (University of Iowa Press)

 

Solmaz Sharif

Look (Graywolf Press)

 

Adam Soldofsky

Memory Foam (Disorder Press)

 

Alfredo Véa

The Mexican Flyboy (University of Oklahoma Press)

 

Dean Wong

Seeing the Light: Four Decades in Chinatown (Chin Music Press)

 

Lifetime Achievement: Nancy Mercado

 

Editor/Publisher Award: Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics

Document Initiative, Ammiel Alcalay, General Editor