Lietary renaissance at Hurston/Wright awards

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2002 by Stovall, TaRessa

Nearly 400 people, including dozens of Black authors, from bestselling superstars like Terry McMillan and Nathan McCall, to emerging scribes, gathered to pay tribute to their literary ancestors and to each other at the Hurston/Wright Foundation's first Legacy Awards Oct. 5, 2002 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Janet Hill, vice president/executive editor, Doubleday Harlem Moon, described the event as "simply magical."

Authors sat among students, editors, agents and critics. As Marita Golden, who created the Foundation in 1990, spoke from the dais about how the Legacy Awards had been dreamed up in a board meeting by bestselling author E. Lynn Harris, every one in the room realized not only the power of the written word, but also the power of speaking a dream into existence.

Golden, a Maryland author, envisioned the foundation named in honor of literary legends Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright as a vehicle to develop, nurture and sustain the world community of Black writers. She started with the Hurston/Wright Award for college fiction writers and added an annual summer writing workshop at Howard University in 1996. The new Legacy Award, the first national honor presented to published writers of African descent by the national community of Black writers, was created to "fill a void," Golden says.

"The mainstream community has the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. We needed a way to annually evaluate, judge and honor our work and say 'Amen!' to our writers," she explains.

Part of that "Amen!" was $60,000 in awards, provided by Borders Books & Music in a unique partnership between a literary foundation and a major corporation. Eighteen books were nominated in debut fiction, nonfiction and fiction - with $10,000 first prizes and two $5,000 finalists in each category.

The winners were David Anthony Durham, author of Gabriel's Story (debut fiction), Ken Wiwa, author of In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son's Journey to Understand His Father's Legacy (nonfiction), and Percival Everett, author of Erasure (fiction).

The fact that all of the judges are Black makes "a statement about Black books," Golden says.

Actress S. Epatha Merkerson of television's Law & Order hosted the black-tie event. Local actors brought excerpts from each of the nominated books to life. The audience cheered, applauded and basked in the literary celebration of intellect, talent and achievement.

The Foundation's first North Star Award for Lifetime Achievement, was presented to acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, whose son accepted in his stead. Golden says she was especially pleased the Legacy awards paid tribute to writers from the Diaspora and not just the United States.

"This was an evening when we all came out to honor our own," says novelist Tayari Jones, a 2000 Hurston/Wright Award winner on tour for her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, and a presenter at the event.

Hill, a recent addition to the Hurston/Wright board, says the Foundation "is feeding and nurturing the Black literary renaissance by supporting Black authors and providing a safe haven, a fertile ground upon which Black writers can stand and grow."

For more information and to view the list of finalists, visit www.hurstonwright.org

- New Jersey writer TaRessa Stovall is co-author of A Love Supreme: Real-- Life Stories of Black Love.