Thursday, June 1, 2023
Eighty Books Nominated for Lillian Smith Book Awards for 2023
The Southern Regional Council (SRC) recently announced that eighty books have been nominated for the Lillian Smith Book Awards for 2023 to be presented at the Georgia Center for the Book on September 21, 2023.
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 2022 were Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance by Mia Bay and My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson.
The 2023 nominated books are:
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Title |
Author |
Publisher |
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Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School |
Kendra James |
Grand Central Publishing |
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Afternoons with Harper Lee |
Wayne Flint |
University of Georgia Press |
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Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place |
Neema Avashia |
West Virginia University Press |
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Arc of Truth: The Thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. |
Lewis V. Baldwin |
Fortress Press |
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Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the US South |
Jodi Skipper |
University of Iowa Press |
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Bertha Maxwell-Roddey and the Power of Black Leadership |
Sonya Y. Ramsey |
University Press of Florida |
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Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt |
Phoebe Zerwick |
Grove Atlantic |
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Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life |
Elijah Anderson |
The University of Chicago Press |
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Black Side of the River: Race, Language, and Belonging in Washington, DC |
Jessi Grieser |
Georgetown University Press |
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Black Swim |
Nicholas Goodly |
Copper Canyon Press |
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Blacks and Jews in America |
Terrence L. Johnson and Jacques Berlinerblau |
Georgetown University Press |
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Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-Blackness in US Society |
Barbara Harris Combs |
University of Georgia Press |
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Boy We Made: A Memoir |
Taylor Harris |
Catapult |
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Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood |
DaMaris B. Hill |
Bloosmbury US |
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Brother Sleep |
Aldo Amparan |
Alice James Books |
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Child: A Memoir |
Judy Goldman |
University of South Carolina Press |
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Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality |
Tomiko Brown-Nagin |
Pantheon Books |
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Civil War By Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Right for Democracy |
Jeremi Suri |
PublicAffairs |
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Combating Hate: A Framework for Direct Action |
Billie Murray |
Penn State University Press |
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Crisis Vision: Race and the Cultural Production of Surveillance |
Torin Monahan |
Duke University Press |
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Diaries of a Terrorist |
Christopher Soto |
Copper Canyon Press |
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Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America |
Psyche A. Williams-Forson |
University of North Carolina Press |
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Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom |
Gregory Nobles |
The University of Chicago Press |
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Enslaved: The Sunken History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade |
Simcha Jacobovici and Sean Kingsley |
Pegasus Books |
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Fear of Black Consciousness |
Lewis R. Gordon |
Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
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Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality |
Elisabeth Griffith |
Pegasus Books |
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Free |
Lauren Kessler |
Sourcebooks |
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Free Joan Little: The Politics of Race, Sexual Violence, and Imprisonment |
Christina Greene |
University of North Carolina Press |
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Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State |
Farah Godrej |
Oxford University Press |
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Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power |
Jefferson Cowie |
Basic Books |
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Hated Cage: An American Tragedy in Britain's Most Terrifying Prison |
Nicholas Guyatt |
Basic Books |
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High Price of Freeways |
Judy Juanita |
Livingston Press |
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How To Survive an Apocalypse: Poems |
Jacqueline Trimble |
University of Georgia Press |
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I Kissed Shara Wheeler |
Casey McQuiston |
St. Martin's Press |
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Kingdoms of Savannah |
George Dawes Green |
Celadon Books |
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Last Summer on State Street |
Tonya Wolfe |
William Morrow |
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Legacy of Slavery at Harvard |
The Presidential Committee on the Legacy of Slavery |
Harvard University Press |
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Legacy of Violence |
Caroline Elkins |
Alfred A. Knopf |
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Letters to Martin |
Randal Jelks |
Chicago Review Press |
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Lynching in Port Jervis |
Philip Dray |
Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
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McMullen Circle |
Heather Newton |
Regal House Publishing |
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Mother Country |
Jacinda Townsend |
Graywolf Press |
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My Faith in the Constitution is Whole: Barbara Jordan and the Politics of Scripture |
Robin L. Owens |
Georgetown University Press
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My Seven Black Fathers |
Will Jawando |
Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
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No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right |
Becca Andrews |
PublicAffairs |
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No Equal Justice |
Peter J. Hammer and Edward J. Littlejohn |
Wayne State University Press |
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None But the Righteous |
Chantal James |
Counterpoint |
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O.N. Pruitt's Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South |
Berkley Hudson |
University of North Carolina Press |
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On Account of Sex: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Making of Gender Equality Law |
Philippa Strum |
University of Kansas |
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People's Plaza: Sixty-Two Days of Nonviolent Resistance |
Justin Jones |
Vanderbilt University Press |
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Postcard from the Delta |
Michael Gaspeny |
Livingston Press |
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Power: The Rise of Black Women in America |
Charity C. Elder |
Skyhorse Publishing |
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Praesidium - Shadows in the Wind Book 1 |
McKinley Aspen |
Muse Literary |
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Real Americans: National Identity, Violence, and the Constitution |
Jared A. Goldstein |
University of Kansas |
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Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America |
Gregory Smithers |
Beacon Press |
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Redemptive Path Forward: From Incarceration to a Life of Activism |
Antong Lucky |
Counterpoint |
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Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre |
RJ Young |
Counterpoint |
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Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama |
Jennifer E. Brooks |
LSU Press |
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Revolution by Law: The Federal Government and the Desegregation of Alabama Schools |
Brian K. Landsberg |
University of Kansas |
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Revolutionary: Samuel Adams |
Stacy Schiff |
Little, Brown and Company |
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Selena Didn't Know Spanish Either |
Marisa Tirado |
Texas Review Press |
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Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls |
Kathleen Hale |
Grove Atlantic |
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Smoking the Bible |
Chris Abani |
Copper Canyon Press |
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Solito: A Memoir |
Javier Zamora |
Hogarth (Random House) |
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Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South |
Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd |
University of Georgia Press |
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Southernization of America |
Frye Gaillard and Cynthia Tucker |
NewSouth Books |
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Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina |
June Manning Thomas |
University of South Carolina Press |
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Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century |
Peniel E. Joseph |
Basic Books |
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Trayvon Generation |
Elizabeth Alexander |
Grand Central Publishing |
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True Biz |
Sara Novic |
Penguin Random House |
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Under the Skin |
Linda Villarosa |
Penguin Random House |
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Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas |
Sam W. Haynes |
Basic Books |
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Voice in the Wilderness: A pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can Help Us Solve our Biggest Problems |
Joseph L. Graves |
Basic Books |
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Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse |
Alora Young |
Hogarth (Random House) |
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We Borrowed Gentleness |
J. Estanislao Lopez |
Alice James Books |
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What the Children Told Us |
Tim Spofford |
Sourcebooks |
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What The Eyes Can't See |
Margaret Edds |
University of South Carolina Press |
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Which Side Are You On |
Ryan Lee Wong |
Catapult |
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White Mosque |
Sofia Samatar |
Catapult |
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Yellow Dog Blues |
Alice Faye Duncan |
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers |
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