At the National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on November 20, the National Book Foundation will present its lifetime achievement award to author Barbara Kingsolver and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to W. Paul Coates, publisher, community activist, and founder of Black Classic Press and BCP Digital Printing.
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| (Photo: Evan Kafka) | |
Kingsolver will be presented with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by Sam Stoloff, president & principal of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency. The Foundation noted that Kingsolver's "extensive oeuvre includes works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, investigative journalism, and science writing. Her most recent novel, Demon Copperhead, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was named an Oprah Book Club selection." Her works include eight other novels, The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, The Lacuna, Flight Behavior, and Unsheltered; the children's book, Coyote's Wild Home, co-authored with Lily Kingsolver; the short-story collection Homeland; the poetry collections Another America (Otra America) and How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons); the essay collections High Tide in Tucson and Small Wonder; and the nonfiction works Last Stand: America's Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, co-written with Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver, and Lily Hopp Kingsolver.
David Steinberger, chair of the board of directors of the National Book Foundation, said, "Spanning genres, Barbara Kingsolver's exceptional writing and authenticity, on and off of the page, has inspired generations of writers and readers. Kingsolver's books--which have been translated into dozens of languages--have had a vast impact on the national and global literary landscape."
Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation, added, "Barbara Kingsolver's writing embraces the personal and the political, examining complex issues of social justice, exalting the natural world, and exploring progressive social change with care and specificity. For Kingsolver, writing is a tool for community activism--a way of shining a light on some of the most intricate environmental and social injustices of our time, and an art form through which she can share stories of her beloved Appalachia with the world. We have all benefited from her brilliance."
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| (Photo: Rosalyn Coates) | |
The winner of the Literarian Award, W. Paul Coates, was cited in particular for Black Classic Press, which since 1978 "has published remarkable, and often out of print, works by and about people of the Black diaspora.... [He is] a lifelong advocate for celebrating the life of Black writers and bolstering their literary legacies." The Award will be presented by his son Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015.
David Steinberger said, "Over the course of his career, W. Paul Coates has recovered and discovered countless essential works of Black literature, and readers everywhere have reaped the benefits of his passion and care for the written word. Since the 1970s, Coates has modeled what it means to be a community-focused independent publisher and tireless advocate for Black diasporic writers and books. The Foundation is proud to count him among the former members of our Board of Directors."
Ruth Dickey added, "As a librarian, publisher, and community activist, W. Paul Coates has been instrumental in preserving the legacy of remarkable writers and elevating works that have shaped our personal and collective understanding of the Black experience within the borders of the United States and around the globe. Coates has demonstrated for more than 40 years the importance of reading the past and nourishing the creative imagination of present and future writers of the Black diaspora."
After leading the local chapter of the Black Panther Party for several years in Baltimore, Md., Coates established the George Jackson Prison Movement--a prison literacy program to provide incarcerated readers access to progressive Afrocentric literature. The movement led to the opening of the Black Book bookstore in Coates' basement, which evolved into the Black Classic Press and later inspired the development of BCP Digital Printing. As founder and publisher of Black Classic Press, Coates has published original works by Yosef Ben-Jochannan, John Henrik Clarke, John G. Jackson, Walter Mosley, and many others, in addition to reissuing titles by Amiri Baraka, Edward Blyden, Amy Jacques Garvey, Larry Neal, J.A. Rogers, Bobby Seale, Carter Woodson, and W.E.B. Du Bois, among many others.