From these finalists for the PEN America Literary Awards, winners will be announced on April 8 and receive a total of more than US$380,000.
Dining tents in New York City’s Bryant Park, February 4. Image – iStockphoto: Massimo Giachetti
From 1,850 Submissions, 55 Finalists
A total of 55 titles in 11 categories have been named today (February 10) as finalists in the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards. They now are in contention for an aggregate purse of more than US$380,000. PEN America, of course, is the US affiliate chapter of PEN International.
An important and notably serious program among world publishing’s myriad awards programs each year, this series is also at times confusing because its sponsor-named categories vary widely in their nature and prize money. Some awards are funded for biennial presentation, rather than yearly.
This morning,
PEN America released the 2021 Literary Awards Finalists. More than forty-five imprints and presses are featured on the list, with half of the titles coming from university and indie presses. Twenty books are from writers making their literary debuts, and half the titles among the open-genre awards are poetry collections. Chosen by a cohort of judges representing a wide range of disciplines, backgrounds, identities, and aesthetic lineages, these fifty-five Finalist books represent a humbling selection of the year’s finest examples of literary excellence.
The stories on the Finalists lists are about parents, grandparents, and grandchildren, about siblings and their rivalries. These writers share the lives of people who are nonbinary and people who are transgender; people of all ages with changing bodies; immigrants and citizens and people seeking refuge; a basketball legend; a young woman who plucks factory chickens smooth; a tugboat driver; and Phillis Wheatley, Ame
Empires mind colonial past and politics present | Twentieth century European history cambridge.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cambridge.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
January 19, 2021
Last Thursday, in his response to a letter written by 23 Afro-Trinbagonians about the placement of Black students in our secondary schools, Kamal Persad, coordinator of the Indian Review Committee, responded: It is clear the under-performance of Afro-children in the education system is still at the top of the black agenda. Accordingly, these 23 persons of African descent adopted an unmistakable black race position (
Express, January 14).
It is wise to contrast Persad s position with a statement of Professor Brian Copeland, Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, at its 2020 graduation: As graduates of The UWI, you are beneficiaries of a public spending that covered some 80 per cent of what it costs to educate you .[You must] use your experience not just to develop yourself in your chosen careers but, even as you do so, that you do all you can to continue the fight of forming a society that better addresses the problems we face today .
‘Black Spartacus’: A biography of the man who may have been the first great anti-colonialist leader
Sudhir Hazareesingh’s book examines the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, who brought revolution to Haiti and inspired the world. Two portraits of Toussaint L’ouverture | Public domain / Wikimedia commons
“The name of Toussaint L’Ouverture is all but unknown in India,” remarked Ramananda Chatterjee, the editor of the Calcutta-based
Modern Review, in April 1908. “Lives such as his,” nevertheless, “may inspire us with self-confidence.” Chatterjee, whose
Modern Review was a fearless critic of imperialism and racism, printed for his readers a biographical sketch of this intrepid Haitian revolutionary leader. It ended with a poignant question: was he “the greatest man that has ever lived?”