DON'T DENY MY NAME Wins American Book Award

2008 AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS — December 28th at Anna’s Jazz Island

Sunday, December 28th
4 pm – 6:30 pm
Anna’s Jazz Island
2120 Allston Way
Berkeley, CA (USA)

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The Before Columbus Foundation announces
Winners of the Twenty-Eighth Annual

2008 American Book Awards

Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (The Penguin Press)

Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday)

Jonathan Curiel, Al’America: Travels Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots (The New Press)

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, Anooshi Lingit Aani Ka, Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804(University of Washington Press)

Maria Mazziotti Gillian, All That Lies Between Us(Guernica Editions Inc)

Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (HarperCollins)

C.S. Giscombe, Prairie Style (Dalkey Archive Press)

Angela Jackson, Where I Must Go:  A Novel(TriQuarterly)

L. Luis López, Each Month I Sing (Farolito Press)

Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)

Fae Myenne Ng, Steer Toward Rock (Hyperion)

Yuko Taniguchi, The Ocean in the Closet (Coffee House Press)

Lorenzo Thomas, Aldon Lynn Nielsen (editor), Don’t Deny My Name:  Words and Music and the Black Intellectual Tradition (University of Michigan Press)

Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (South End Press)

 Lifetime Achievement Award
J.J. Phillips
Author of Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale

 

 

Oakland, CA — The Before Columbus Foundation announces the Winners of the Twenty-Eighth Annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS. The 2008 American Book Award winners will be formally recognized on Sunday, December 28th at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley, CA. The awards will take place from 4 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Authors attending will read selections from their works and sign copies of their award-winning books. A reception and book signing will take place following the ceremony. This event is free to the public. For more information, call (510) 681-5652.

California Poet Laureate (2005-2008) Al Young will host the event. Al Young was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger, who has said of Mr. Young: “Al Young is a poet, an educator and a man with a passion for the arts. His remarkable talent and sense of mission to bring poetry into the lives of Californians is an inspiration.”

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.

– Javier Huerta