2010 BCALA Literary Award Winners

The Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) announced the winners of the 2010 BCALA Literary Awards during the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association in Boston, MA. The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors published in 2009, including the work of a first novelist, and a citation for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing. The recipients will receive the awards during the 2010 Annual Conference of the American Library Association in Washington, D.C.

The winner in the Fiction category is Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young (Goldman House).

The two Fiction Honor Book winners are Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) and Carried by Six by Allen Ballard (Seaford Press).

Buying Time is a captivating, suspenseful thriller focused on greed, murder and corruption in the viatical industry. Waverly Sloan, a disbarred attorney about to lose it all, ventures into a very lucrative career redeeming life insurance policies for the terminally ill. He soon discovers however that the life-threatening dangers of this new career outweigh the financial gains. The well developed subplots of domestic violence and pedophilia heightens the suspense of the novel and also generates constant juggling of the suspects list. Samuels-Young, a corporate attorney in Southern California, is the author of three previous mysteries.

Sag Harbor is a humorous coming of age tale where Colson Whitehead provides readers with an inside view of what it means to be black and affluent, but mainly what it means to be a teenage boy. Whitehead clearly captures 1980s popular culture as well as tapping into the African American vernacular and oral traditions. Colson Whitehead is an award winning author and lives in Brooklyn.

Carried by Six is a gripping page-turner, where Obie Bullock, leader of the Men of Africa United (MauMau) has waged a war against the drug dealers who have taken over his urban Philadelphia neighborhood. Tired of being terrorized by the dealers and having the young men of the neighborhood either being “carried by six” pallbearers to their graves or “judged by twelve” and sentenced to a prison term, Obie fights to keep his family safe and himself alive while making his neighborhood a better place to live. Author Allen Ballard, a Philadelphia native, now lives in Albany, NY where he teaches history and Africana Studies at the State University of Albany.

The winner in the Nonfiction category is The Breakthrough by Gwen Ifill (Doubleday).

An Honor Book winner for Nonfiction was also selected: Freedom Struggles by Adriane Lentz-Smith (Harvard University Press).

The Breakthrough explores the political leadership of the Black community starting with the Civil Rights Movement and progressing to the contemporary and what Ifill calls “The Age of Obama.” Not until the appearance of President Barack Obama on the national political scene did political leadership become so hotly contested within the Black community. Ifill describes this power struggle between two generations of Black leadership as “sandpaper politics” where change is often abrasive but necessary. The Breakthrough provides intriguing and insightful profiles of Black leaders engaged in national politics as well as rising stars at the local and state levels. Gwen Ifill is moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Through the experiences of the 200,000 black soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, Freedom Struggles uses moving stories and experiences to bring forth a significantly influential but little known aspect of American history. Adriane Lentz-Smith is Assistant Professor of History at Duke University.

The recipient of the First Novelist Award is K.C. Marshall for My Sister’s Veil (XLibris). This debut novel is an inspirational and motivating story about the trials and tribulations of three strong Black women. Their lives are separated yet connected through their friendship and consequential environment. Using their inner strength or spiritual “veil”, the main characters show how their ancestral culture shapes their drive to overcome adversities thus giving them the fortitude to make a difference changing themselves and their circumstances. K.C. Marshall is a free lance writer.

For excellence in scholarship, the BCALA Literary Awards Committee presents the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation to In Search of Our Roots by Henry Louis Gates (Crown Publishers). Gates has taken his popular PBS television documentary and captured his extensive genealogical research in a compelling book. Nineteen famous and unknown African Americans allow us to follow their incredible journey tracing family sagas through slavery and back to Africa. This is a book of enormous importance that will inspire others to take this courageous journey to explore their family roots.

Members of the BCALA Literary Awards Jury are: Joel W. White, Chair, Durham (NC) County Library; Virginia Dowsing Toliver, Vice Chair, Washington University in St. Louis; Gladys Smiley Bell, Hampton University; Karen B. Douglas, Duke University Law Library; Makiba Foster, Washington University in St. Louis; Carolyn Garnes, Library Consultant, Atlanta, GA; and Ernestine Hawkins, East Cleveland Public Library.

The Spoken Word/Celebrating African American Poetry

Title: The Spoken Word/Celebrating African American Poetry
Location: A C Bilbrew Library, Los Angeles
Click here
Description: In celebration of National Poetry Month, an eclectic and dynamic group of Los Angeles poets will read and perform some of their most treasured poems. Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
Start Time: 1:00 pm
Date: 2009-04-18

Article: More (and Better) Books for Black Teens

Publishers are paying attention to African-American teens
by Felicia Pride and Calvin Reid — Publishers Weekly, 12/8/2008

Talk to a Young Adults editor or take a stroll through that section at your local bookstore and it’s evident that there’s a growing number of books aimed at the young adult market—and those numbers include more titles geared specifically to African-American teens. As publishers are addressing the lack of material aimed at this market—many African-American teens have turned to popular adult authors because of this dearth—there has clearly been some improvement.

These days publishers are offering black teens books that deal with serious issues, such as drug addiction and pregnancy, as well as pure entertainment; they’re looking to introduce new authors and experiment with graphic novels and even historical fiction for teens, all while looking for creative ways to make sure parents, teachers and librarians—as well as the kids themselves—know what’s on their lists specifically for black teens.

Publishers Weekly talked with a number of editors and category buyers as well as an agent specializing in titles for African-American teens in order to get a better view of the past, present and future of titles aimed at black teenagers.

Publishers Weekly

Article: Libraries Facing Closures and Cuts

Philadelphia and San Diego recently announced that they would need to shut some libraries because of budget shortfalls. “I know how important libraries are, but unfortunately we have to close a $108 million deficit this fiscal year, and serious changes need to be made to our budget,” says Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

The cuts come as job losses and empty bank accounts are sending more Americans to their local libraries, where use is up more than 20% in some places. For many, library resources help replace everything from magazine subscriptions and DVD rentals to home Internet. “The top reasons people come to libraries to use computers are for K-12 education and job hunting,” said Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association. According to one study, a family of four saves as much as $2500 a year by borrowing 10 items per month instead of buying.

So, how will libraries stay open? Beyond requesting and receiving a portion of the proposed economic-stimulus package, individual branches are finding creative ways to get help. The Friends of the Free Library of Philadelphia created a Web page where residents can contribute as little as $10—less than the cost of most new paperbacks—toward keeping open the 11 libraries slated for closure. Currently, the city has no plans to reopen them once they’re closed.

— Meg Massey
Parade.com

Article: From the Streets to the Libraries

Urban Fiction Makes Its Way From Streets to Libraries – NYTimes.com

By ANNE BARNARD
Published: October 22, 2008

In one book, the hero spirals toward a violent death dealing drugs on the streets of Laurelton, Queens, witnessing, along the way, a baby ripped apart by bullets. In another, a convict plots the seduction of his prison psychotherapist.

And then there’s Angel, a Versace-clad seductress who shoots her boyfriend in the head during sex, stuffs money from his safe into her Vuitton bags and, as she fondles the cash, experiences a sexual frisson narrated in terms too graphic to reproduce here.

All these characters, and the novels they populate, are favorites of Shonda Miller, 35, a devoted library-goer who devours a book a day, enforces a daily hour of reading time for her entire family and scours street stands and the Internet for new titles. She also acts as an unofficial guide and field scout for the Queens Library as it builds its collection of a fast-growing genre, written mainly by black authors about black characters and variously known as urban fiction, street lit or gangsta lit.

It’s not the kind of fare usually associated with librarians. But public libraries from Queens, the highest-circulation public library system in the country, to York County in central Pennsylvania are embracing urban fiction as an exciting, if sometimes controversial, way to draw new people into reading rooms, spread literacy and reflect and explore the interests and concerns of the public they serve.

“We’ve got people who are reading for the first time. We’ve got people coming into our building asking for Teri Woods” — the creator of Angel — “who have never come here before,” said Lora-Lynn Rice, the director of collections at the Martin Library in York County, which held a symposium on urban fiction during National Library Week in April. “Why would we not embrace this?”

Urban fiction’s journey from street vendors to library shelves and six-figure book deals is a case of culture bubbling from the bottom up. That is especially true in New York, where the genre, like hip-hop music, was developed by, for and about people in southeast Queens and other mostly black neighborhoods that have struggled with drugs, crime and economic stagnation.

Read more at http://www.nytimes.com