Eugene B. Redmond will receive the 2012 Lifetime Achievement from the Before Columbus Foundation at the 33rd annual American Book Awards to be held Sunday, October 7 at the University of California at Berkeley.
Redmond, who won an American Book Award for Literary Excellence in 1993 for The Eye in the Ceiling: Selected Poems (Harlem River Press), has written and edited several dozen books, journals, magazines and plays for stage and TV.
As literary executor of the Henry Dumas Estate, and with the assistance of Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka and Toni Morrison, Redmond edited more than six books by Dumas (1934-1968), a colleague of his at Southern Illinois University’s East St. Louis Experiment in Higher Education in the 1960s.
Perhaps Redmond’s most influential work is Drumvoices: The Mission of African-American Poetry (1976), a critical history of a major literary subject just as it was finally coming to be understood as a major literary subject by the academy. It later spawned a namesake journal that Redmond continues to edit.
Some of his most beautiful and original poetry also dates back to the 1970s, including the collections In a Season of Rain & Desire and Songs from an Afro Phone. In recent decades Redmond has worked on what he describes as a “mem-war” in verse.
A world traveler and intimate of some of the world’s most celebrated writers, including Angelou and Morrison, Redmond also has been recognized as Poet Laureate of his hometown, East St. Louis.
The American Book Awards honor will be Redmond’s second major recognition for Lifetime Achievement in recent years. In 2009 the St. Louis American recognized Redmond as Lifetime Achiever in Education at its Salute to Excellence in Education. Redmond was recognized both for his pioneering work in diversifying university curricula (he is emeritus professor of English at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville) and for his tireless community efforts as a literary organizer, most notably as founder of the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club.
In fact, fellow EBR Writers Club members Charlois Lumpkin and Darlene Roy will travel with Redmond to Berkeley where he plans to “perform” his acceptance speech.
The American Book Awards, created to recognize outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community, highlight literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. The awardees range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are writers’ awards given by other writers.
The other 2012 American Book Award Winners are: Annia Ciezadlo, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War; Arlene Kim, What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Echoes?; Ed Bok Lee, Whorled; Adilifu Nama, Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes; Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor; Shann Ray, American Masculine; Alice Rearden, translator, Ann Fienup-Riordan, editor, Qaluyaarmiuni Nunamtenek Qanemciput: Our Nelson Island Stories; Touré, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now; Amy Waldman, The Submission; Mary Winegarden, The Translator’s Sister; and Kevin Young, Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels.
