We are very excited to share that Shara McCallum's No Ruined Stone is a nominee for a 2022 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award. The winner will be announced in October, and we are crossing our fingers for Shara!
Of the book, Mervyn Morris says, "No Ruined Stone imagines what might have happened if Robert Burns had sailed from Scotland in 1786, as planned, to take a job on a slave plantation in Jamaica. Supported by research, it is a subtle, multi-layered verse narrative, voiced mainly by the poet himself and later by his granddaughter, passing for white. The worlds it vividly presents beget reflections on creativity, history, slavery, race and many other issues. It is an exceptional work, a memorable achievement."
The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation’s Annual Legacy Awards Ceremony honours the best in Black literature in the United States and around the globe. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers. Since then, the organisers have recognised nearly 400 works by Black writers in the categories of debut fiction, fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and honoured 97 students with College Writing Awards.
The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation was founded in 1990 in Washington, D.C., and is dedicated to discovering, mentoring and honouring Black writers. Through workshops, master classes and readings, the organization preserves the voices of Black writers in the world literary canon, serves as a community for writers, and continues a tradition of literary excellence in storytelling established by its namesakes.
