Page 5 - BCALA Winter 2018

Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. BCALA Literary Awards
Press Release
For Immediate Release February 11, 2018
BCALA ANNouNCes The 2018 LITeRARy AWARds WINNeRs
Contact: Gladys Smiley Bell, 757-727-5185
or [email protected]
Press Room – The Colorado Convention Center
The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. (BCALA) announces the winners of the 2018 BCALA Literary Awards during the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association in Denver, CO. The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors published in 2017, including an award for “Best Poetry” and a citation for “Outstanding Contribution to Publishing”. The recipients will receive awards during the 2018 annual meeting of the American Library Association in New Orleans, LA.
The winner of the 1st Novelist Award is “A Kind of Freedom: a Novel” by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Counterpoint Press).
The fiction category winner is “Difficult Women” by Roxane Gay (Grove/Atlantic, Inc.).
The Honor Books for fiction are “Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner) and “The Tragedy of Brady Sims: a
Novel” by Ernest J. Gaines (Vintage Books).
The winner in the nonfiction category is “Chester B. Himes: a Biography” by Lawrence P. Jackson (Norton W. W. &
Company).
The Honor Book for the nonfiction category is “Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies” by Dick Gregory (HarperCollins).
The winner for BCALA’s Best Poetry Award is “Incendiary Art: Poems” by Patricia Smith (Northwestern University Press).
The BCALA Literary Awards Committee presents the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation to “100 Amazing Facts About the Negro” by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Knopf Doubleday).
Members of the BCALA Literary Awards Jury are: Gladys Smiley Bell (Chair), Hampton University, Hampton, VA; Tiffany A. Duck, Suffolk Public Library, Suffolk, VA; Grace M. Jackson-Brown, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO; LeRoy LaFleur, Tufts University, Boston, MA; Dominique Luster, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Ritchie A. Momon, Mid-Continent Public Library, Independence, MO; and John Page, Retired, Washington, D.C.
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