The Southern Regional Council (SRC) recently announced that nineteen books have
been nominated for the Lillian
Smith Book Awards for 2016 to be presented in
Decatur, Georgia on September 2, 2018.
SRC was founded in 1919 to combat
racial injustice in the South. SRC initiated the Lillian
Smith Book Awards shortly after Smith's death in
1966 to recognize authors whose writing extends the legacy of the outspoken
writer, educator and social critic who challenged her fellow Southerners and all Americans on
issues of social and racial justice. Since 2004 the awards have been presented
by SRC in a partnership with the University of Georgia
Libraries, whose Hargrett Rare Book and
Manuscript Library houses a historic collection of
Lillian Smith's letters and manuscripts. The Georgia Center for the Book became a partner in 2007, when the awards ceremony first
became part of the Decatur
Book
Festival.
Piedmont College, which operates the Lillian Smith Center, became a
partner in 2015.
The award recipients for 2015 were Vagrant Nation by Risa Goluboff and The Firebrand and the First
Lady: Portrait of a Friendship by Patricia Bell-Scott.
The 2018 nominated books are:
BOOK TITLE |
AUTHOR |
PUBLISHER
|
What Runs Over
|
Kayleb Rae Candrilli
|
YesYes Books
|
I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men
& What I Had On
|
YesYes Books
|
|
Landscape with Sex and Violence
|
YesYes Books
|
|
Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of
Sarah Vaughan
|
Elaine M. Hayes
|
Ecco
|
Maintaining Segregation: Children and
Racial Instruction in the South, 1920-1955
|
LeeAnn G. Reynolds
|
LSU Press
|
Janesville: An American Story
|
Amy Goldstein
|
Simon & Schuster
|
Uncompromising Activist: Richard
Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College
|
Katherine Reynolds Chaddock
|
John Hopkins University Press
|
Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times
|
Deborah G. Plant
|
Praeger ABC-CLIO
|
Tales of Two Americas: Stories of
Inequality in a Divided Nation
|
Edited by John Freeman
|
Viking/Penguin Books
|
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History
of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America
|
Viking/Penguin Books
|
|
The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of
Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives
|
The New Press
|
|
Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of
Robert Smalls' Escape from Slavery to Union Hero
|
St. Martin’s Press
|
|
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and
Punishment in Black America
|
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
|
|
Unwarranted: Policing Without
Permission
|
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
|
|
The Weight of This World
|
David Joy
|
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
|
Madwoman |
Shara McCallum |
Alice James Books
|
Reaper |
Jill McDonough |
Alice James Books
|
Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment |
Alessandra Lynch |
Alice James Books
|
