Black Academics Honored With Book Awards

Stephen L. Carter, professor at Yale Law School, received the Fiction Literary Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Professor Carter was recognized for his novel New England White.

The winner in the nonfiction category is Arnold Rampersad, Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. Professor Rampersad was recognized for his critically acclaimed book Ralph Ellison: A Biography.

Deborah Willis, University Professor at New York University, was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation for her book Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits.

In a more significant nationwide contest, Arnold Rampersad’s biography of Ralph Ellison was selected as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Rampersad will be competing with four other finalists for the award, which will be given out in New York City on March 6.

Also nominated for National Book Critics Circle Awards is Edwidge Danticat for her autobiography Brother, I’m Dying. A graduate of Barnard College with a master’s degree from Brown University, Danticat has taught creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami.

Harriet A. Washington, a former fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, was nominated in the nonfiction category for her book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.