The Before Columbus Foundation has announced the winners of the 47th annual American Book Awards, given to works of “outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.”
The twelve books selected as winners include Nicholas Boggs’ biography Baldwin: A Love Story, which previously won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, which won the National Book Award.
Cedric De Leon won an award for Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity, as did John Fugelsang for Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds; Douglas Kearney for I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always; Adela Najarro for Variations in Blue; and Matthew Shipp for Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings.
Also winning awards were Beyond the Glittering World: An Anthology of Indigenous Feminisms and Futurisms, edited by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie, Kinsale Drake, and Darcie Little Badger; Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr; Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement by Brandon M. Terry; John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law by Beth Lew-Williams, and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers: 1840 to the Present by Deborah Willis.
Karen Tei Yamashita, author of novels including I Hotel and Questions 27 & 28, was honored with a lifetime achievement award, while anti-censorship awards went to Miami bookseller Mitch Kaplan and former talk show host Stephen Colbert.
The American Book Awards were established in 1978. Previous winners include Louise Erdrich for Love Medicineand The Round House; David Halberstam for The Reckoning: The Challenge to America’s Greatness; Edwidge Danticat for The Farming of Bones; and Danzy Senna for Colored Television.
The winners of this year’s awards will be honored at a ceremony on Sept. 26 at the University of California in Berkeley.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer
