The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation and Borders Books & Music have joined forces to present the first annual Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a national award to honor published writers of African descent. The Foundation is seeking nominations from publishers for its three award categories: first fiction, fiction and nonfiction.
Books must be published in 2001 and submitted from publishers only. Writers must be of African descent, and titles must have been published in the United States or must be U.S. editions of foreign books published for the first time in the United States; self-published authors are eligible. Applications and more information can be found online at www.hurston-wright.org/ legacy_award.html or by calling the Hurston/Wright Foundation at (301) 422-0152. Nominees will be announced in July 2002, with an awards ceremony to be held in September 2002 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
There will be a first-place winner ($10,000 prize) and two finalists ($5,000 prize) in each category. The prizes are underwritten by Borders. Borders began assisting the foundation last year by underwriting two full scholarships to the Hurston/Wright Writers' Week at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
