Dawes nominated for Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation announced last week that Chancellor's Professor of English Kwame Dawes is among the nominees for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Dawes is a nominee in the poetry category for his collection City of Bones: A Testament (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2017).  

The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award^TM  is the first national award presented to Black authors by a national organization of Black writers. The award recognizes the best poetry books, fiction books, nonfiction books, and debut novels by Black writers from the United States and abroad. The nominees are chosen in a juried competition conducted by previous Legacy Award honorees, who also select the winners and finalists from that short list of nominees. This year's winners and finalists will be announced at the 17th Annual Legacy Awards Ceremony on Friday, October 19th, 2018 in Washington, D.C.

The Hurston/Wright Foundation's mission is to discover, mentor, and honor Black writers. Named for literary geniuses Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, the foundation preserves this legacy and works to ensure the future of Black writers and the literature they produce.

Kwame Dawes is Chancellor's Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He is the author of 21 books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. In 2016 his book, Speak from Here to There, a co-written collection of verse with Australian poet John Kinsella appeared. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Co-founder and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Often called ‘the busiest man in literature,’ Kwame celebrated the publication of eight new books in 2016-2017.