Essayist, cultural critic, and poet Hanif Abdurraqib has won the C$75,000 (about US$57,000) Weston International Award, honoring "career achievement of an international author whose body of nonfiction work, written in English or widely available in translation, has advanced our understanding of the world." The prize is sponsored by the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation and administered by the Writers' Trust of Canada.
The jury said it "was enchanted by Hanif Abdurraqib's ability to create a chorus of Black life through the shared languages of performance, music, and athleticism, that is utterly and authorially distinct. Whether writing on basketball, dance, music, or policing and violence, he calls out falsehoods, canters the marginalized, and affirms that 'they can't kill us until they kill us.'
"Across Abdurraqib's masterful and genre-bending work, the local and specific are spun inward and outward in ways that manifest a deep connection to people, place, and the world. He combines searing insights into Blackness and social inequality in the United States with themes of love and belonging, life and death. The work sings and stings and brings truths, both personal and communal, as he voices culture and its complexities with bold, compassionate lyricism and a real sense of love."