Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc.

BCALA Literary Awards

Press Release
For Immediate Release
January 26, 2020

BCALA Announces the 2020 Literary Awards Winners

The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. (BCALA) announces the winners of the 2020 BCALA Literary Awards during the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association in Philadelphia, PA. The awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African American authors published in 2019, including an award for Best Poetry and a citation for Outstanding Contribution to Publishing. The recipients will receive awards during the 2020 11th National Conference of African American Librarians in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The winner of the 1st Novelist Award is The Water Dancer: A Novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Random House).

The Fiction category winner is The Nickel Boys: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (Knopf Doubleday).

The Honor books for Fiction are Africaville: A Novel by Jeffrey Colvin (HarperCollins); The Last Thing You Surrender: A Novel of World War II by Leonard Pitts, Jr. (Bolden); and Red at the Bone: A Novel by Jacqueline Woodson (Riverhead Books).

The winner in the Nonfiction category is Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem: A Memoir by Daniel R. Day (Random House).

The Honor book for the Nonfiction category is Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White by William Sturkey (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).

The winner for BCALA’s Best Poetry Award is 1919 by Eve L. Ewing (Haymarket Books).

The Honor book for Best Poetry Award is I: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte (University of Pittsburgh Press).

The BCALA Literary Awards Committee presents the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation Award to Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films, the Filmmakers by Donald Bogle (Running Press).

Members of the BCALA Literary Awards Jury are: Gladys Smiley Bell (Chair), Hampton, VA; Tiffany A. Duck, Suffolk, VA; Dana G. Evans, Virginia Beach VA; Ritchie A. Momon, Independence, MO; John Page, Washington, D.C.; Jamar Rahming, Wilmington, DE; and Deimosa Webber-Bey, Kew Gardens, NY.