2017 American Book Awards announced!

PDF File of Press Release

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 22^nd, 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