Opening Minds. Challenging Minds. Awards Ceremony September 10, 2009 th ANNUAL ANISFIELD-WOLF74 BOOK AWARDS Welcome to the 2009 Anisfield-Wolf Mark your calendars and join us for Book Awards ceremony. For more these upcoming Anisfield-Wolf Book than 70 years, the Anisfield-Wolf Awards activities. Book Awards has recognized writers whose works contribute to our City Club of Cleveland Anisfield-Wolf Program, featuring Annette Gordon-Reed understanding and appreciation of 2009 winner, The Hemingses of Monticello the rich diversity of human cultures. Friday, September 11, 2009 City Club of Cleveland 850 Euclid Avenue Noon WELCOME Panel Discussion: The Work of Jamaica Kincaid Ronald B. Richard Tuesday, September 15, 2009 President & Chief Executive Officer Cleveland Public Library The Cleveland Foundation Martin Luther King Jr. Branch 1962 Stokes Boulevard INTRODUCTION OF 2009 WINNERS Free and open to the public Henry Louis Gates Jr. 6 P.M. Chairperson, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Jury Panel includes Drs. Marilyn Mobley and Alphonse Fletcher University Professor Erika Olbricht of Case Western Reserve University. Harvard University Sponsored by the Cleveland Public Library. ACCEPTANCE 5th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Lecture, Louise Erdrich featuring Jamaica Kincaid The Plague of Doves 1997 winner, The Autobiography of My Mother Nam Le Tuesday, September 22, 2009 The Boat Amasa Stone Chapel 10940 Euclid Avenue Annette Gordon-Reed The Hemingses of Monticello 4:30 P.M. Presented by Case Western Reserve University Paule Marshall Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, SAGES, the Lifetime Achievement Award Cleveland Foundation and Cleveland Public Library. 2009 Anisfield-Wolf Television Special Thursday, October 15, 2009 WKYC-TV, Channel 3 field-Wolf Awards Jury The Cleveland Foundation wishes to thank the 7:30 P.M. Cleveland Public Library, A Cultural Exchange, Case Western Reserve University Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the City Club of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Public Library, and the LIT for their support. About the Authors Annette urban Native population in Boston, she is the author Gordon-Reed of 13 novels, as well as volumes of poetry, children’s The Hemingses books, and a memoir of early motherhood. of Monticello Her award-winning novels include, Love Medicine, winner of the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Growing up in a then- Award; The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No segregated east Texas, Horse, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Annette Gordon-Reed The Plague of Doves, a New York Times bestseller was intrigued by Thomas and a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Jefferson after reading a Erdrich received a bachelor’s degree from children’s biography nar- Dartmouth College and a master’s degree in rated by a fictional slave. Photo by Jerry Bauer creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her interest in Jefferson She currently resides in Minnesota and is the owner continued when, at age 14, she concealed her minor of Birchbark Books, an independent bookstore. status to join a book-of-the-month club in order to receive another Jefferson biography. Gordon-Reed continued her study of Jefferson’s life at Dartmouth Nam Le College, where she majored in history. She is also a The Boat graduate of Harvard Law School. Born in Vietnam and Her newest book, The Hemingses of Monticello, raised in Australia, Nam received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for history and 2008 Le left a career in law to National Book Award for nonfiction. An earlier work, attend the Iowa Writers’ Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Workshop as a Truman Controversy, was applauded for its comprehensive and Capote Fellow. He has definitive look at the intricate and often misunderstood since been showered with relationship between Jefferson and one of his female writing awards, among slaves. Gordon-Reed edited Race On Trial: Law and them the Dylan Thomas Justice in American History, and co-authored Vernon Prize, the NSW Premier’s Photo by Joanne Chan Can Read: A Memoir, a 2002 Anisfield-Wolf winner. Literary Award for Book Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York of the Year, the UTS Glenda Adams Award, the Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers Pushcart Prize and the Michener-Copernicus University. She resides in Manhattan. Society of America Award. He also has received fellowships from the Louise Erdrich Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips The Plague of Doves Exeter Academy, and the University of East Anglia. His fiction has been widely anthologized and A Native American whose has appeared in venues including Best American mother is of Ojibwe Nonrequired Reading 2007, Zoetrope: All Story, descent, Louise Erdrich is A Public Space, One Story, NPR’s Selected Shorts widely acclaimed as one and Prospect Magazine. of the most significant Le holds a bachelor’s degree and LLB from the Native writers today. In University of Melbourne. He is currently the Harvard addition to serving as a Review fiction editor and divides his time between past editor for The Circle, Australia and the United States. a newspaper for the Photo by Persia Erdrich Edith Anisfield Wolf 1889–1963 About the Prize he Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognizes Paule recent books that have made important Marshall Tcontributions to our understanding of Lifetime racism and our appreciation of the rich Achievement diversity of human culture. They are books Award that open and challenge our minds. Brooklyn-born Paule Marshall is the daughter Established in 1935, the Anisfield-Wolf of Barbados immigrants prize is the only American book award whose West Indian designated specifically to recognize works Photo by Daniela Zedda influence winds its way addressing issues of racism and diversity. through her works. She Past winners have presented the extraordi- began her career as the food and fashion editor at nary art and culture of peoples around the Our World, a small African- American magazine. It world, explored human rights violations, was there she started her first novel, Brown Girl, exposed the effects of racism on children, Brownstones, a coming-of-age story of a young reflected on growing up bi-racial, and American girl with Bajan parents exploring the inter- illuminated the dignity of people as they sections of race, culture, and class. reach for justice. Marshall is the author of five novels: Brown Girl, The prizes are given each year to books Brownstones; The Chosen Place, The Timeless People; published in English in the previous year. Praisesong for the Widow; Daughters; and The Fisher Generally, one award is given for a work of King. She also has published two collections of short nonfiction and another for fiction or poetry. fiction. An independent jury of nationally recog- She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1960 nized scholars selects each year’s winning and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. She books. Each author receives a monetary also is a winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for prize at a ceremony held annually in Literature, among other honors. Cleveland, Ohio. Marshall recently retired from New York University, where she held the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair of Since 1963, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Literature and Culture. She continues to write, has been administered by the Cleveland having just published her memoir, Triangular Road. Foundation, the world’s first-ever community Marshall resides in Richmond, Va. foundation. Prior to that time, it was under the sponsorship of Saturday Review. From the early sixties until 1996, Ashley Montagu, the internationally renowned anthropologist and author, chaired the awards jury. Cleveland poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf established the book prizes in honor of her father and husband to reflect her family’s passion for issues of social justice. Anisfield-Wolf Winners Through the Years 1936 Harold Gosnell Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago Edith University of Chicago Press Anisfield 1937 Julian Huxley and A.C. Haddon We Europeans: A Survey of “Racial” Problems Wolf Harper & Brothers 1889–1963 1938 (no award) 1939 (no award) 1940 E. Franklin Frazier The Negro Family in the United States University of Chicago Press rom the time she was a young girl, Edith 1941 Louis Adamic From Many Lands Anisfield Wolf was passionately committed Harper & Brothers Fto social justice. Her father, John Anisfield, took great care to nurture his only child’s 1942 Leopold Infeld sense of local and world issues. After a Quest Doubleday Doran & Co. successful career in the garment industry, he retired early to devote his life to charity. James G. Leyburn The Haitian People Edith helped to administer his philanthropy. Yale University Press A published poet and civic activist, Edith 1943 Zora Neale Hurston skillfully managed her family’s large estate. Dust Tracks on a Road She was active with the Cleveland Public J.B. Lippincott Library for 20 years, working to ensure 1944 Maurice Samuel that the library had books from all cultures The World of Sholom Aleichem and was a forum where citizens could meet Alfred A. Knopf to debate the issues of the day. Roi Ottley New World A-Coming Because Edith Anisfield Wolf was a poet, Houghton Mifflin Co. she used literature as a means to explore 1945 Gwethalyn Graham racial prejudice and to celebrate human Earth and High Heaven diversity. A woman ahead of her time, she J.B. Lippincott established the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Gunnar Myrdal in 1935, some 20 years before the landmark An American Dilemma Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Harper & Brothers Court decision. 1946 Wallace Stegner with the Upon her death, she left her home to the Editors of Look One Nation Cleveland Welfare Association, her books to Houghton Mifflin Co. the Cleveland Public Library and her funds to the Cleveland Foundation for a commu- St.