The Before Columbus Foundation announced the winners of its annual American Book Awards, given in “recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.”
The foundation honored novelist and memoirist Maxine Hong Kingston (The Woman Warrior) with its lifetime achievement award and gave a special criticism prize to the late bell hooks (Bone Black). Neta C. Crawford (The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War) won the foundation’s anti-censorship award.
The American Book Awards do not have categories or finalists. This year, 13 authors won prizes, including four authors of fiction: Ayanna Lloyd Banwo for When We Were Birds, Jamil Jan Kochai for The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, Bojan Louis for Sinking Bell: Stories, and Leila Mottley (Nightcrawling).
Six writers won for their works of nonfiction: Edgar Gomez for High-Risk Homosexual, Kelly Lytle Hernández for Bad Mexicans, Anne F. Hyde for Born of Lakes and Plains, Aidan Levy for Saxophone Colossus, Darryl Pinckney for Come Back in September, and Javier Zamora for Solito.
The three poets to win awards were Everett Hoagland for The Ways, Sherry Shenoda for Mummy Eaters, and Mosab Abu Toha for Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear.
The American Book Awards were established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation, which was founded by poet and novelist Ishamel Reed. Past winners of its lifetime achievement awards have included Katha Pollitt, Greil Marcus, and Gayl Jones.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
