Michelle Obama's, Becoming, won the nonfiction narrative and audiobook awards at the British Book Awards organized by trade magazine, The Bookseller. The winners from each of the British Book Awards' eight categories go forward for the overall best book of the year. Judges said Becoming - chronicling Obama's life from the south side of Chicago to the White House - stood "head and shoulders above the competition" in the narrative non-fiction category. It beat Michael Wolff's White House expose Fire and Fury to take the top spot. The audiobook version, narrated by Obama herself, beat Ben Whi ..read more

Martin Kilson, author and political scientist who was the first tenured African American professor at Harvard University and who helped lay the foundation for collegiate black studies departments, which he sometimes criticized for a lack of academic rigor, died April 24 at a hospice center in Lincoln, Mass. Early in his career, Dr. Kilson’s ideas of advocating for African American studies and for more black students at elite colleges were seen as radical. But his scornful view of politicized black studies programs prompted an outcry from students, administrators and other professors..." Read ..read more

The Boston Review has announced short story and poetry contests, each worth $500, both based on “a new contest model shaped by social justice and accessibility concerns." The magazine, among whose editors is Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), is most noted in the African literary scene for having published “Hitting Budapest," the short story by NoViolet Bulawayo which received the 2011 Caine Prize and became the opening chapter of her Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, We Need New Names. Read more ..read more

This is a pan-African prize, viewed also as Africa’s NOBEL prize. It unifies Africans, celebrates Africa’s great minds, brings home Africa’s best intellectuals as judges, entertainers, great communicators and leaders in their own rights. Published novels by an author of African descent are eligible for this prize. The Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa was established by The Lumina Foundation in 2005. It was conceived as a very prestigious prize in honor of Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in literature to celebrate excellence in all its cerebral grace, its liberating qualities, the ..read more

It’s one of the biggest fiction awards of the year, with the likes of Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ali Smith and last year’s winner, Kamila Shamsie having all previously claimed the gong. Now the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist 2019 has been shared, ahead of the winner being announced on June 5. This is what you need to know about each: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite This is one funny book, but not in a ha-ha, laugh-out-loud manner. It’s more in its ability to trigger the feeling (particularly if you are blessed with sisters) that, yes, you can totally i ..read more

The Shilts-Grahn award for nonfiction, which "recognizes the best nonfiction book of the year by or about lesbians, bisexual women, and/or trans women, or that has a significant influence upon the lives of queer women," went to Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry at the 31st annual Triangle Awards, honoring LGBTQ fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and trans literature published in 2018 ..read more

Jessica B. Harris, Scholar of African-American Food, Inducted into the James Beard Foundation Hall of Fame Culinary historian, journalist and cookbook author Jessica B. Harris was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame in a ceremony for media awards in New York. Harris, an authority on the cuisine of the African diaspora, was introduced by master of ceremonies Tyra Banks who recognized the writer for her “exemplary work" sharing “the story of the African American experience through the culinary traditions of her – and my – ancestors." Harris was the first schola ..read more