African-American Authors Make History at National Book Awards
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 00:00 Last Updated on Thursday, 26 January 2012 14:26
For the first time ever, the National Book Foundation, with over 60 years of honoring great American books, presented its prestigious National Book Awards to two African Americans at its annual awards ceremony on November 16, 2011. The National Book Award in Fiction Winner was Jesmyn Ward for SALVAGE THE BONES; and the National Book Award in Poetry Winner was Nikky Finney for HEAD OFF & SPILT.
Jesmyn Ward's SALVAGE THE BONES, published by Bloomsbury USA, portrays the relationship of four poor African American siblings living in a coastal Mississippi town as they prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with challenges. Ward grew up and currently lives in DeLisle, Mississippi. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and the 2010-2011 John and Renée Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. Her debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds (2008), was an Essence Magazine Book Club selection, the recipient of a Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award, and a finalist for both the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Ward is the professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama located in Mobile. Salvage the Bones is her second novel.
Nikky Finney's HEAD OFF & SPLIT, published by TriQuarterly Books, an imprint of Northwestern University Press, examines African Americans and events that surrounds their life: from Rosa Parks to Condoleezza Rice to a woman waiting for rescue on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney is professor of creative writing at the University of Kentucky and the author of three previous volumes of poetry, The World Is Round (winner of the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry), Rice(winner of a PEN America Open Book Award in 1995), and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). Recipient of the Kentucky Foundation for Women Artists Fellowship Award, Finney is also the author of Heartwood, a collection of stories, and edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South.
The other award winners included Stephen Greenblatt for THE SWERVE: HOW THE WORLD BECAME MODERN (Nonfiction Winner); and Thanhha Lai for INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN (Young People's Literature).