If you are unable to download the program, please see the order of the event below:

PROGRAM BEGINS AT 6:30 PM

Welcome and Remarks

Allison Seymour

The Hurston/Wright Award for College Poetry

Presented by: Cynthia Landrum

Judge: Teri Cross Davis

Winner: Aliyah Griddine

The Hurston/Wright Award for College Fiction

Presented by: Cynthia Landrum

Judge: Destiny Birdsong

Winner: Cameron Carter

The Hurston/Wright Crossover Award 

Presented by: Cynthia Landrum

Judge: Prince Shakur

Winner: Kyrah Simon

Debut Fiction 

Presented by:  Eva Greene Wilson

Finalists

Elizabeth Acevedo (Family Lore; Ecco)

Soraya Palmer (The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts; Catapult)

Kai Thomas (In the Upper Country; Viking Books)

Judges: Natashia Deon, Sifiso Mzobe 

Dinner and Musical Act

Mark Prince

In Memoriam

A Dedication to Our Beloved Wordsmiths Who Are Now Ancestors

General Fiction

Presented by: Eva Greene Wilson

Finalists

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Chain-Gang All-Stars; Pantheon Books)

Cheryl A. Head (Time’s Undoing; Dutton)

Ayana Mathis (The Unsettled; Alfred A Knopf)

Mihret Sibhat (The History of a Difficult Child; Viking Books)

Judges: JJ Amaworo, Alaya Johnson 

Speculative Fiction  

Presented by: Eva Greene Wilson

Finalists

Johnny Compton (Spite House; Tor Nightfire)

Mary McLaughlin Slechta (Mulberry Street Stories; Four Way Books)

Moses Ose Utomi (Lies of Ajungo; Tordotcom)

Judges: T.L. Huchu, Rita Woods

Historical Nonfiction  

Presented by: David Whettstone

Finalists

Victor Luckerson (Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street; Random House)

Donovan X. Ramsey (When Crack Was King; One World)

Yepoka Yeebo (Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World; Bloomsbury Publishing)

Judges: Quraysh Ali Lansana, Toni Ann Johnson 

Memoir Nonfiction  

Presented by: David Whettstone

Finalists

Dionne Ford (Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing; Bold Type Books)

Emmanuel Iduma (I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History; Algonquin Books)

Cassandra Jackson (The Wreck: A Daughter’s Memoir of Becoming a Mother; Viking Books)

Leta McCollough Seletzky (The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Counterpoint)

Aomawa Shields (Life on Other Planets; Viking Books)

Judge: Yvonne (E-vonne) Battle-Felton 

Poetry   

Presented by: Lucy Anne Hurston

Finalists

Amanda Gunn (Things I Didn’t Do With This Body; Copper Canyon Press)

Patricia Spears Jones (The Beloved Community; Copper Canyon Press)

A. Van Jordan (When I Waked, I Cried To Dream Again; W.W. Norton & Co.)

Airea Dee Matthews (Bread & Circus; Scribner)

Charif Shanahan (Trace Evidence; Tin House) 

Judges: Shara McCallum, Courtney Faye Taylor

Creative Fiction Anthology

Presented by: David Whettstone

Ntozake Shange, Edited by Imani Perry (Sing a Black Girl’s Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange; Legacy Lit/Hachette Book Group)

Judge: Hope Glover

2024 MERIT AWARD WINNERS

Closing Remarks

Book Signing