Introduced in 2001, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, named for US African American writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, honour the best in Black literature in the United States and around the globe have announced its finalists for 2021.
The finalists were announced on Wednesday, August 18, 2021. The Legacy Award for fiction, nonfiction and poetry was the first national award in the United States presented to Black writers by a national organisation of Black writers. Some of the previous honourees include Alain Mabanckou, Aminatta Forna, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, Colson Whitehead and Kwame Dawes.
The award announced the finalists for the awards in the following categories;
The 2021 Legacy Awards Debut Fiction nominees
Black Sunday, Tola Rotimi Abraham
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw
Remembrance, Rita Woods
The Coyotes of Carthage, Steven Wright
The 2021 Legacy Awards Fiction nominees
These Bodies, Morgan Christie
Ring Shout, P Djeli Clark
Telephone, Percival Everett
Book of the Little Axe, Lauren Francis-Sharma
The Freedom Artist, Ben Okri
Black Bottom Saints, Alice Randall
The 2021 Legacy Awards Nonfiction nominees
Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, Vincent Brown
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, Deirdre Mask
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another, Ainissa Ramirez
Memorial Drive: A Daughters Memoir, Natasha Trethewey
The 2021 Legacy Awards Poetry nominees
Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommy Blount
Seeing the Body: Poems, Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Jump the Clock: New and Selected Poems, Erica Hunt
Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, John Murillo
White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, Kiki Petrosino
Pale Colors In a Tall Field, Carl Phillips
The winners will be revealed at the Legacy Awards Ceremony on October 15, 2021.