Awards Season.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University and actress S. Epatha Merkerson (Lackawanna Blues, Law & Order) were cohosts for a gala event to present the 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards at the Hudson Theater of the Millennium Broadway Hotel in Manhattan, New York, New York, on November 1.

Merkerson described how books sustain her as an actress during long waits between work on stage or set. "Reading is some place to be other than here," she said.

The awards are given by the Hurston Wright Foundation in partnership with Borders Books & Music. The foundation's North Star Awards for contributions to black literature were given to Gordon Parks, the legendary photographer/writer; Howard Dodson, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and Marie Brown, the pioneering literary agent. The Madam C.J. Walker Award for business went to owners of the Hue-Man Book Store of Harlem: Rita Ewing, Marva Allen and Celeste Johnson.

The 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards went to Chris Abani, in the debut fiction category, for Graceland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Maryse Conde, fiction, for Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (Atria Books); Alexis De Veaux, nonfiction, Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde, (Norton); and Tracy Price-Thompson, contemporary fiction, A Woman's Worth, (One World/Ballantine). The Legacy Award is the first presented to published writers of African descent by the national community of black writers. An annual $10,000 first prize and two $5,000 finalist prizes for the highest quality writing are given in the Fiction, Debut Fiction and Nonfiction categories, plus a $10,000 first prize for Contemporary Fiction.

The Quills, the new book award program established this year to bring "populist sensibility" to the generally ratified atmosphere of national book awards nevertheless was not without high-brow selections. Among books honored at the October 11 ceremony in New York was Langston Hughes's Let America Be America Again: And Other Poems, published by Vintage Books. (See YOUNG ADULT REVIEWS, BIBR, July-August 2005.) In the televised presentation October 22 on NBC affiliates, Al Roker of the NBC Today Show was cohost of the program produced by M Poker Productions.

The Quills, launched with the support of Reed Business Information, celebrates the best books of the year in nineteen categories, according to organizers. Readers voted on selections via the Web and at Borders Books and Music stores.

Nominees also included:

Audio: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (unabridged CD) by Malcolm Gladwell, Time Warner AudioBooks. (The book from Little, Brown and Company, also was nominated in the Health/Self-Improvement category. (See "In the Twinkling of an Eye," BIBR, July-August, 2005.)

Young Adult/Teen: 47, by Walter Mosley, Little Brown and Company.

Sports: Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward, Alfred A. Knopf. (See NONFICTION REVIEWS BIBR, January-February, 2005). For more information, go to http://quillsliteracy.org.

Thomas Sayers Ellis of Case Western Reserve University was among ten recipients of the $40,000 Whiting Writers' Awards for 2005 to exceptional emerging writers. He was honored for poetry for his first book, The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press, January 2005). (See BIBR, March-April 2005).

Dr. Laurent Dubois, an associate professor at Michigan State University, was honored by Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. He was awarded its seventh annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize for his work A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 17871804 (University of North Carolina Press, 2004). The prize is to be awarded at the Yale Club of New York on February 23, 2006, capping its Black History Month celebrations.

Toni Morrison was the presenter for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters given by the National Book Foundation to Norman Mailer. She also turns 75--born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, on February 18, 1931. Nominees for the foundation's National Book Award presented at the same ceremony included Walter Dean Myers for Autobiography of My Dead Brother, (Amistad, August 2005. (See "At Their Level;' BIBR, November-December 2005.)

Free-Press Issues on Tour

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) has created a program to bring leading journalists to bookstores to discuss flee-press issues and threats posed by courts that force reporters to reveal confidential sources. Bookstores interested in being a host should contact, Christopher Finan, president of ABFFE, 139 Fulton St., Suite 302, New York, NY 10038. Telephone: [phone], fax [phone]. Log on to www.abffe.co for more information.

Crossover Deal

Nina Foxx's Marrying Up, (Avon Trade, June 2005), was optioned for development as a stage play to G Davis Plays. Agents were James Elam at Elam Reavis and Elaine Koster.

The plot: A middle-class 30-year-old under pressure from a mother who has upwardly mobile stars in her eyes, must decide if it is just as easy to fall for mysterious (maybe shady?) rich man as it was for the sweet, sexy one she already has.

Rehearsals with an all-star cast were to start Nov 15 in Nashville, Tennessee, under the direction of Garrett Davis of GDavis Plays, the company announced, and the play goes out on the urban theater circuit in February 2006, premiering in Alabama.

Foxx says she was a consultant for the script and will be assistant director. She and her daughter (age 8) will make cameo appearances in select markets. Foxx plays herself.

Log on to www.bibookreview.com, for more news about deals in the publishing industry.

Second Time Around

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) reported that sales of used books are growing at a faster pace than other types of book sales with college textbooks and online sales leading the way.

In 2004, $2.2 billion was spent on used book sales, up 11.1 percent from 2003, according to a preview of the study being released in November. Online sales of previously owned books grew 33.3 percent in 2004, for total sales of $609 million.

Used-book sales account for 8.4 percent of total consumer spending on books. BISG reported that used college textbooks accounted for most of these sales, about 28 percent of the total college textbook market. College students spent $1.6 billion on used textbooks. Read more about it at http://www.bisg.org/docs/BISG_Used_Book_Study_Preview.pdf.

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