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