2014 Arab American Book Awardees Revealed

posted on: Aug 26, 2014

Dozens of authors, editors, publishers, academics and cultural creatives will celebrate 2013’s best books on the Arab American experience at a national literary gathering in Minneapolis next month.

The Arab American National Museum’s (AANM) Arab American Book Award ceremony and reception will serve as the closing night event at the biennial meeting of RAWI (Radius of Arab American Writers) and Minneapolis’ Arab arts presenter Mizna. It takes place at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014, at The Loft Literary Center at Open Book, 1011 S. Washington Ave. in Minneapolis.

And the winners are…

WINNER: Fiction Award
The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon

WINNER: Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award
We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War
Nadje Al-Ali and Deborah Al-Najjar, editors

WINNER: George Ellenbogen Poetry Award
A Concordance of Leaves by Philip Metres

WINNER: Children’s/Young Adult Award
A Kid’s Guide to Arab American History
By Yvonne Wakim Dennis and Maha Addasi

Five more titles earned Honorable Mentions.

This year’s authors and editors reside in California, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Ontario, Canada. Several are expected to attend the Sept. 20 ceremony, including Philip Metres (A Concordance of Leaves), Deborah Al-Najjar (We Are Iraqis), and Yvonne Wakim Dennis and Maha Addasi (A Kid’s Guide to Arab American History).

Publishers of winning titles are based in Connecticut; Idaho; Illinois; Washington State; Ontario, Canada, and Doha, Qatar.

This national literary competition – the only one of its kind in the United States – is designed to draw attention to books by and about Arab Americans. The program has attracted increasing numbers of submissions from authors and publishers across the nation in its eight-year history, in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s/young adult literature.

The winning titles were chosen by genre-specific review committees comprised of selected readers from across the country, including respected authors, university professors, artists, librarians and poets. Winning titles have ranged from educational and academic books on the Arab American experience to mainstream fiction by an Arab American author on a non-Arab theme.

The Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award was named to honor the legacy and contributions to Arab American scholarship by Evelyn Shakir, who died of breast cancer in 2010. In addition to winning the 2008 Arab American Book Award for Fiction for Remember Me to Lebanon: Stories of Lebanese Women in America (Syracuse University Press, 2007), Prof. Shakir extensively researched the history of Arab women and wrote the groundbreaking work Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States (Praeger, 1997). Shakir’s longtime partner, poet George Ellenbogen, established the named award in collaboration with the Arab American National Museum.

In appreciation of Ellenbogen’s continued support for the Book Award program, the Poetry category award now bears his name. George Ellenbogen will speak about his connection to the Museum and Arab American literature during the Sept. 20 ceremony.