11/5/15 The shortlist for the Authors Club Best First Novel Award 2015 is as follows: The Letter Bearer by Robert Allison (Granta) A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray (Hutchinson) The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman (Weidenfeld) Ishmael’s Oranges by Claire Hajaj (Oneworld) Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (Penguin) The Restoration of Otto Laird by Nigel Packer (Sphere) The chair of judges, Suzi Feay, comments: ‘When reducing the longlist to the shortlist, we have only one criterion in mind: literary quality. As the shortlist is then handed over to a guest adjudicator to make the final choice, we have to make sure that every one of our selections is a potential winner. This year’s list includes one novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, that has already been an immense success, but the others are no less worthy of a huge readership. From the deserts of North Africa in World War Two to the bloody world of 18th century prize-fighting, from the decaying dreams of an ageing modernist architect to the compulsions and convictions of a woman with dementia, from a forbidden love affair set against the background of the Middle East, to the sweet/sour account of life in a Lancashire Mormon family, all these novels are compulsively readable, the work of six born storytellers.’ The winner will be announced – and the £2, 500 prize awarded – by this year’s guest adjudicator, the novelist and memoirist Susie Boyt, at a reception at the National Liberal Club on Wednesday 17 June. ___________________________________________ Best First Novel Award 2015 Long List Announced 25/4/15 We are delighted to announce the long list for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2015. The 12 books were selected from a record number of more than 60 submissions by a panel of Club members after intense and wide-ranging debate. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton (Picador) Academy Street by Mary Costello (Canongate) The Spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson (Little, Brown) Ishmael’s Oranges by Claire Hajj (Oneworld) The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt (Simon & Schuster) In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman (Picador) Acts of Omission by Terry Stiastny (John Murray) The shortlist will be made public in May, and the shorted authors will read from their work at Foyles bookshop, 107 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0DT, on Wednesday 27 May. The winner will be announced – and the £2, 500 prize awarded – by this year’s guest adjudicator, the writer Susie Boyt, at a reception on Wednesday 17 June at the National Liberal Club in London. ______________________ 3.6.14 Shortlisted authors (from left) Gavin Extence, Jack Wolf, Kevin Maher, Anthea Nicholson and Lucy Cruickshanks The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award has been won by Jack Wolf for his astonishing debut The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones. The prize was adjudicated by the novelist Isabel Wolff, who announced the winner and presented the cheque for £2, 500 at a reception at the National Liberal Club in London on Tuesday 3 June. “It was a privilege to be asked to judge this prestigious award, ” said Isabel Wolff, “and a great pleasure to read the six shortlisted titles: Lucy Cruickshanks’ searing portrayal of post-war Vietnam in The Trader of Saigon; Gavin Extence’s touching coming of age story The Universe Versus Alex Woods; Kevin Maher’s exhilaratingly funny, dark, tale of growing up in rural Ireland, The Fields; Eimear McBride’s extraordinary, transfiguring A Girl is a Half Formed Thing; and The Banner of the Passing Cloud, Anthea Nicholson’s beautifully written novel about life in post-Stalin Georgia. “But in the end it was Jack Wolf’s astonishing debut that really stood out. The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is an extraordinary novel that explores the 18th-century tension between reason and emotion, science and superstition, in an absolutely masterful way. It’s both thrillingly erudite and infectiously entertaining, completely compelling and morally unsettling. The voice never falters, and the execution is masterful. What a marvellous book – a tour de force.” Jack Wolf added: “I was thrilled to win the Authors Club Best First Novel Award last night, and to hear my work praised so highly by Isabel Wolff. The award is a tremendously affirming and encouraging prize to win, as the way in which novels are long and shortlisted is entirely transparent and reflective of both novelistic excellence and readers’ enjoyment. I now can’t wait to read the other shortlisted novels.” ___________________________ We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2014. The six books were selected by a panel of Club members after intense and wide-ranging debate.

The twentieth century saw an unmatched period of artistic accomplishment in Latin America. Though it is nearly impossible to choose only a few writers to highlight, the following Latin American authors must be noted for their contributions to the richness of modern literature and poetry. In the early portion of the 1900s, poets like Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo, as well as Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, and Argentine prose writer Jorge Luis Borges laid the foundation for the Latin American Boom. The Latin American Boom was a period of literary flourishing in the 1960s and 70s that brought much of the area’s literature to an international audience. Famous Boom authors include Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To get a sense of the puissance of 20th century Latin American writers, it should be mentioned that of the ten figures mentioned above, half (García Márquez, Mistral, Vargas Llosa, Paz, and Neruda) have won the Nobel Prize. They are among the fortunate international authors who no doubt signify legions of worthy Latin Americans waiting for an audience. Here we explore a selection of authors whose works contribute to the robust Latin American canon. Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) Borges was a precocious writer. He published his first work, a translation of Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince, " at age 7. However, Jorge Luis Borges, the classic writer, did not surface until his late thirties. Always afflicted with poor eyesight, Borges fell down a staircase and sustained a severe head injury. It was during his recovery that he turned his attention to his writing abilities, and in an attempt to prove he could still, or at all, write, he began a story which was to become "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Borges was a learned reader, sometimes startlingly so. He first read Don Quixote in an English translation; he admired Walt Whitman; and he was drawn to the many classical writers of England, North America, and Europe. He had a taste for Poe, and especially Kafka, whom he deliberately emulated. His short stories frequently present his reader with a dizzying array of libraries, labyrinths, and mirrors. Ana Maria Barrenchea, in an expertly brief description of Borges, said that he "is an admirable writer pledged to destroy reality and convert man into a shadow.” Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) Alejo Carpentier’s great stylistic contribution to Latin American literature was his magical realism, called lo real maravilloso, which reflects the fantastic, and often otherworldly, properties of Latin American life. As the likes of García Márquez and Neruda have expressed (see below), their real-life world of revolution and upheaval has created an audience that embraces the extreme as never too far from the truth. Carpentier was musically inclined and was drawn to Afro-Cuban culture. His novel The Kingdom of this World depicts the Haitian uprising in which African slaves rebel against their French colonial rulers. Carpentier’s work not only provided the Boom authors with stylistic inspiration, but his life of exile and arrests offered a model for the Latin American artist’s dedicated political activism. Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Few Latin American authors have had the luxury to ignore politics. Neruda was an outspoken voice in Latin American world politics, a move which allowed him, in some ways, to alienate everyone. He controversially favored Joseph Stalin and had his library ransacked and desecrated by the ruling Chilean regime. He depended on the kindness of supporters across Latin America to escape. Talk to any of his devoted readers, and you’re sure to find something about his politics that they both admire and condemn.

Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1946-1987 is a nonfiction book written by David Pringle, published by Grafton Books in 1988 in the United Kingdom and the following year by Peter Bedrick Books in the United States. The foreword is by Brian W. Aldiss. Primarily the book comprises 100 short essays on the selected works, covered in order of publication, without any ranking. It is considered an important critical summary of the field of modern fantasy literature. Modern Fantasy followed Pringle's, published by Xanadu in 1985. In the introduction he commends the nearly simultaneous "rival" followup by Xanadu: Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, Horror: The 100 Best Books (Xanadu, 1988). In fact Xanadu had followed with at least three more books in its 100 Best series: Crime and Mystery in 1987, both Horror and Fantasy in 1988. Xanadu had commissioned Michael Moorcock to write Fantasy but the project had been turned over to James Cawthorn when it became "clear that I would not be able to deliver it for a long time". Modern Fantasy [edit] Pringle says in the introduction, rebutting one academic complaint about the sprawling scope of fantasy, "But it seems to me that fantasy is an indiscriminate form. We may even view it as the primal genre, essentially formless, a swamp which has served as the breeding ground for all other popular fiction genres ... Up to the eighteenth century, almost all narrative fictions, both verse and prose, were fantastic to a greater or lesser degree." In the introduction to the earlier book, he had distinguished "Supernatural Horror" and "Heroic fantasy" as the other important divisions of fantastic fiction beside science fiction. They may be represented by and, featuring "the irruption of some supernatural force into the everyday world" and "set in completely imaginary worlds" respectively. Here he adds "the Fabulation, or absurdist metafiction—stories which are set in the real world, but which distort that world in ways other than the supernaturally horrific." He names Thomas Pynchon, Angela Carter, John Crowley, and Geoff Ryman as authors of fabulations included in his hundred. While covering no foreign-language fantasies and few children's or 'light' fantasies, "I have tried to make a balanced list, and in so doing I have included some books which are not really to my taste—they may well be other people's favourites, though. In truth, there are not a hundred masterpieces of modern fantasy, any more than there a hundred masterpieces of science fiction." "[A]t least some of the novels I have selected are masterpieces of modern literature, full of beauty and wonder. The others are craftsmanlike entertainments which I happily commend to you for your enjoyment." References [edit] Jack Merry, Fantasy Reference Works: An omnibus review. Green Man Review (no date). Confirmed 2011-07-18. Reference Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Michael Burgess, Lisa R. Bartle, Libraries Unlimited, 2002, p. 88 The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant, Orbit Books, 1997, p. 788 Modern Fantasy, 23. Moorcock, "Introduction", p. 9; Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, Cawthorn and Moorcock, 1988. Modern Fantasy, 14. Modern Fantasy, 19. Modern Fantasy, 20.

William Wells Brown has the distinction of being the first African American novelist ever to be published — in 1853. Brown wrote “Clotel” during five productive years in Europe in which he experienced a freedom that wasn’t possible in America. His novel is taught in some college classes today, but many people don’t know him. “He was erased, to a very large extent, from the public record, ” says Ezra Greenspan, author of the new biography, “William Wells Brown: An African American Life.” “It was nothing personal or particular. He was erased the way virtually all African Americans were — their presence, their culture. And he really only came back into existence with the civil rights movement.” Brown was born a slave in Kentucky around 1814. For many of his early years he was enslaved in Missouri. But by the time he was 19 years old he had been sold to a Mississippi River steamboat owner. While in port at Cincinnati, Wells Brown escaped - traveling in the Ohio countryside, by foot, in the January cold. “He took his life into his hands, ” says Greenspan. “He stopped a good Samaritan-looking figure, a person wearing a wide-brimmed hat, clearly, identifiably a Quaker.” The Quaker took him in and offered William the gift of a complete name, his OWN name: Wells Brown. In gratitude, the runaway slave went by the name William Wells Brown for the rest of his life. After two weeks, Brown kept going north, eventually settling in Boston. In the following years, he rapidly rose to prominence as an anti-slavery speaker and the author of a powerful slave narrative, “Narrative of William W. Brown.” As a black man, and a fugitive slave, he had more freedom in the North, but he certainly wasn’t free. “What we mean by freedom really is a relative term, ” says Greenspan. “Brown would say repeatedly: if one wanted to be free, absolutely free, one needed to go to England.” “Slavery had been abolished in England and France. They could have a wider scope for their actions and their thoughts than they could presumably have in the United States, ” Greenspan says. Brown left for Europe intending to stay only a few months. With London as his home base, he traveled extensively and freely in England, Ireland, Scotland and France. He spoke before large, receptive crowds. He developed close friendships with blacks and whites — in the anti-slavery movement, in government, in his social life. He wrote a book about his European adventures, which in England was published in 1852 as “Three Years In Europe.” (It was published in America three years later under the title, “The American Fugitive in Europe.”) Creatively, and in every way, Brown was thriving. “If you run forward 50, 60, 70, 80 years, ” Greenspan says, “what Brown and Douglass were doing in the 1840s and 50s was what the next generations of black Americans would do. We think of Josephine Baker, as it were, finding her feet on stage in Paris. We think of James Baldwin living much of his mature life feeling free for the first time. But there actually was a long history that went back to the middle of the 19th century. Brown in some ways was a pioneer.” He may have been a pioneer — but he couldn’t go home. Back in America, Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. That meant escaped slaves could be hunted down and captured — even in the north. Brown stayed in Europe four more years until a Quaker family in England, Ellen and Henry Richardson, raised the money to buy his freedom. The Richardsons had done the same thing for Frederick Douglass a few years earlier. “He was a free man, and he did not wait, ” Greenspan says. “As soon as the freedom papers arrived in London, Brown was on one of the first steamships out of Liverpool and right back into his life in the Boston area, but on a fundamentally different basis.”

When Amanda Kohn picked up her 6-year-old son Hayden’s equipment at Dick’s Sporting Goods back in December after registering for Sidney Crosby’s Little Penguins Learn to Play Program, initially, she didn’t notice the lucky Golden Ticket in his bag – given to 100 randomly selected participants. “Honestly, I didn’t even see it in the box of his equipment at first, ” Kohn said. “He’s like ‘here Mom, here’s this Golden Ticket.’ I’m like, ‘what’s that about?’” On Friday, Amanda and her husband Jeffrey quickly learned what the ‘Golden Ticket’ entailed. They watched as Hayden was surprised by Crosby and his Penguins teammates Marc-Andre Fleury, Patric Hornqvist, Carl Hagelin, Jeff Zatkoff, Derrick Pouliot, Conor Sheary, Bryan Rust and Scott Wilson for a practice session split between the two sheets of ice at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex. “Honestly, I teared up a few times, ” Amanda said of watching Hayden – who she says ‘lives and breathes hockey’ – interact with the players. “I’m so proud of him because this is what he wants to do and I know how important this day is to him that as a mom, it’s just kind of emotional. This is actually way beyond what I thought this was going to be.” Amanda turned to Jeffrey. “How long were we here before Hayden said, ‘This is the best day of my life?’” she asked. “We’re very grateful and thankful for (Crosby), to come down onto their level and to be able to give them this experience – especially for somebody of his caliber in this sport – to get kids involved and get them to love the sport also.” “He really looks up to those guys, ” Jeffrey added. “You should see him watching games. You just can’t believe it when you’re that close. You put yourself in the perspective of a kid, it’s like ‘wow, these are my heroes and I’m on the ice with them, and they’re teaching me something about hockey.'” It’s an experience that Crosby and the guys couldn’t be happier to give the kids. “It’s fun. They have so much energy, ” Crosby said. “On a day like this where you’re done with practice, you’re a little tired when you get out there. You seem to get a bit of a jolt of energy when you’re out there with them. They’re having a ton of fun. “The hardest part is just trying to get them to go in line and figure out what they’re doing out there (laughs). Usually there’s a few stragglers, but it’s pretty fun to be out there.” A combined effort between Crosby, CCM, Dick’s Sporting Goods and the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation provided free head-to-toe equipment – including skates, stick, helmet, gloves, pants, shoulder pads, shin pads and elbow pants – to 1, 000 children between the ages of 4-7 this year. Now in its eighth season, the program has introduced over 7, 200 players to the sport since its inception in 2008-09 and has played an absolutely crucial role in the growth of youth hockey in western Pennsylvania. For Crosby, it’s been crazy to reflect on just how far the program has come since the beginning. “I think the cool thing has been to see the numbers grow and to see the interest grow, ” Crosby said. “The registration was I think 500 at the start. I think it’s almost 1, 000 now or close to there. Just to see the kids who have gotten into it and that they’ve enjoyed the experience and year after year, parents, kids come up and say they’ve been involved in the program and had a great time with it.” That’s absolutely been the case for 7-year-old Trent Gordon, a first-time enrollee in the program. Because the kids aren’t just given brand-new equipment through the program – they’re given an opportunity to learn the sport. The players receive weekly lessons (10 total) at 24 participating rinks, including four special programs for girls only. Volunteers at each venue provide on-ice teaching. And Trent has been having a blast at the instructional sessions. “He loves it, ” said his dad Brian. “He looks forward to it every Sunday morning. He’s up early ready to go.” Brian grew up in northern Indiana, and he and his wife Julie recently moved here from Cleveland. They admitted they don’t know much about hockey, and that Trent’s been teaching them the rules when they play in the basement at their home. “It’s exposure for him. He’s out doing a new sport we don’t know anything about that he’s picked up just being in the neighborhood and being with the kids that he’s started to become friends with, ” Julie said. “It was nice to sign him up in November and be selected and get all the gear. It was generous and very exciting.” That camaraderie is part of what Crosby hopes the kids take away from this experience. “That’s the best thing you can hear, is just that they enjoy themselves, ” Crosby said. “And if they stick with it, great. If they don’t, they’re able to say they tried it and were introduced to it. Regardless, they hopefully just enjoy their time while they’re in it.” This past summer, the Pens captain held the inaugural Sidney Crosby Hockey School in his hometown of Nova Scotia at the rink he grew up playing in (where he spent the entire week on the ice with the kids). Back then, Crosby looked up to local products Cam Russell and Don McLean, recalling how excited he was whenever he got the chance to see those guys up close. Now, Crosby is paying it forward. “You want to be able to help out or give back in any way you can, ” Crosby said. “I had guys locally growing up that I looked up to, and I think just to be here in the city and for kids to have a close look at the team, be able to meet guys, to be involved in hockey, a sport that’s so special to us as players and the team, I think you’re just happy to share that.

Our mission is to reduce senior isolation and promote intergenerational engagement through storytelling. Senior isolation is the root cause of a range of health issues, from depression, substance abuse, weakened immune systems and to premature death. Recognized by AARP and proven by internationally published research, The Best Day of My Life So Far delivers a storytelling model that reduces senior isolation and improves senior health. We gather seniors, volunteers and visitors around a table for an hour a week in settings like nursing homes, rehab centers, community centers, assisted living communities, and mentor local volunteers to blog about the group’s experience and the stories told. We also curate and share stories through our social media pages, newsletter, storybook and events. Inspired by the friendship between a grandmother and a granddaughter, Best Day began in 2009 with a small storytelling group at Philadelphia Senior Center and a blog. Since then, we have brought our group model to diverse neighborhoods in Philadelphia and started scaling nationwide. Backing for our methods Carefully evaluated by professional researchers through focus groups, surveys, case studies, interviews with participants and observations of sessions Implemented at diverse sites nationwide with consistent outcomes Endorsed by AARP Presented at major professional conferences such as American Society on Aging’s National Conference and Australian Association of Gerontology’s National Conference We need your help: donate and get social! To see our seniors’ stories, connect with us via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and our Story Letter newsletter. Making a donation is the most powerful way you can help. Your donation changes seniors’ lives by funding direct engagement and programming. The more funds we raise, the more seniors we engage. In order to meet the demand for our services and programming, we really need your help. Visit our Donate page to find out more. Ask us about how to engage your workplace at info@bestdayofmylifesofar.org. The Problem: Senior Isolation Approximately 28% of people aged 65 or older in our country live alone, making them susceptible to social isolation. If left untreated, isolation can lead to other health issues, including depression, substance abuse, weakened immune systems and premature death. Most socially isolated seniors have a 26% higher premature death rate, which is almost four times the impact on early death as obesity. Our Solution: Senior Engagement The Best Day of My Life So Far reduces senior isolation and improves senior health. We engage seniors on two levels: first, in group settings with peers and younger people; second, via social media, books and events with even larger audiences. Seniors achieve personal enrichment and fulfillment through writing and sharing in an open environment. They make their own choices and decisions, which they may feel they are losing in other areas of life. Proven Model Recognized by AARP and proven by internationally published research, our storytelling model is unique because it combines reminiscence, narrative and communication techniques with intergenerational engagement and social media, to deliver a full range of positive cognitive, psychological and health outcomes, making our approach more holistic than traditional medicine or therapy. Our Story Armed with pen, paper and passion, and driven by her friendship with her grandmother, architect Benita Cooper founded our organization modestly in 2009 with a small storytelling group at Philadelphia Senior Center and a blog. She shared a table with seniors, volunteers and visitors for an hour a week, and blogged about her experience and the stories she heard – the blog got over 40, 000 views within the first 3 years. With the hard work of a team of dedicated volunteers, Best Day groups have since expanded to diverse neighborhoods in Philadelphia and started scaling nationwide, from New Jersey, Illinois, Washington to Oregon; Best Day stories are shared with younger people everywhere through social media, books and events.

Use the menus below to see a complete list of the vehicles currently being parted out by that model. The table consisting of letters followed by a year denotes the year the vehicle entered the yard. Just match the first letter in the stock number to the table and you can tell how long the vehicle has been here. Some of them have been here for over 20 years! But, that doesn't mean the vehicle is totally stripped. Our cars and trucks remain in the yard until the last useable piece is sold. The vehicles with in front of them are recent arrivals. For vehicles with a just click the camera for an online picture. Please remember that the vehicles listed in the menus are Parts Vehicles Only! We very rarely sell these vehicles complete once they enter the yard. Each picture of the vehicles have the date of when it arrived, so more than likely they look quite different now anyway.

*Guest blog from Prizeo winner James Lafaman Best day of my life. There are no words…She is the most awesome woman in the world. My day started with great anticipation. Pamela truly is my all time celebrity crush. I have been a fan since day 1 and over a period of many years, that has never diminished. I had met her before, but never longer than 1 minute, so this was going to be different. It was going to be my first visit to the Playboy Mansion. Not to mention that I was going to be sharing this day with my super cool wife. In November of this year, we will have been together for 40 years (married for 37). I was nervous. Joanne was just as excited and she knew how much this meant to me. Joanne and I did some research on Pam’s favorites, so I ordered 16 pink, frosted roses to greet her with. We arrived a little early because we didn’t know how long it would take to get there. We were greeted at the gate and drove up to find a security person. He was nice and treated us well while we waited. We soon met Teri who was also super nice. We waited outside and took some pictures for about 15-20 minutes. Then a car pulled up and she arrived! Goodness she was beautiful. Wearing a white and red dress and pink heels. I gave her the flowers and she gave me a little thank you kiss on the cheek. I think I melted. We then walked the grounds of the mansion, with Joanne and I taking over 100 pictures. It was very relaxed and Pam was the ultimate tour guide. She was sweet and down to earth. It felt like we had known each other for years. We were all very comfortable. She took us all around, telling stories about the mansion, Playboy, Hef and her personal experiences there. We walked the grounds, chatted, took pictures, fed the monkey’s and then went inside. We toured the first floor, signed the guest book and took more pictures. Despite Pam having been up late the night before for a photo shoot, she was as attentive as a real estate agent trying to sell the place :). It was way beyond any expectations that I had going in. She really is amazing.

There are thousands of stocks you can trade on any given day. The potential number of trade opportunities can feel overwhelming to the untrained eye. Do you pick popular stocks like Apple or Google to trade? Do you just play IPOs and shoot for a quick flip based on the hype? Maybe you scan the market in hopes of finding stocks that best fit your trading methodology. If you were looking for a simple list of high volume stocks that you can trade everyday and make boat loads of money, you have come to the wrong place. Finding the best stocks to day trade requires work and quite a bit of research on your part. In this article I will illustrate 7 methods you can use to identify the best stocks to day trade. Start Your Day Early I am going to cover a number of approaches below that you can use in both the pre-market and during the trading day to identify the best stocks to day trade. Regardless of which approach best fits your day trading style, the one thing required for each selection process is you must get an early start to the trading day. Gone are the days where you can show up at your desk at 9:15 am, log on and start placing trades. The market is getting faster and faster with the increased trading volume from hedge funds. At a minimum, you should start your prep work at 8 am. This will provide you enough time to conduct your morning research and configure your monitors with the stocks you are actively tracking for the day. #1 Find the Best Stocks to Day Trade with Pre-market Movers For those of you that have been trading for some period of time you will know that the pre-market is one of the street's favorite ways to head fake you. A stock could be up 6% in the pre-market only to open up 2% at 9:30 am. The reason for the large price swing is due to the thin volume that can carry a stock either way outside of the regular trading session. I start my scanning at 8:00 am sharp. This gives me a full hour and a half before the market opens to conduct my research. Below is what you want to look for when scanning stocks during the pre-market.

By Ricco Villanueva Siasoco Who said the classics were all written by dead white males? In the last two hundred years, black writers have contributed some of the most spirited and important works to American literature. These range from early narratives depicting slavery to modern works dealing with the lingering effects of slavery, racism and apartheid. In fact, some of the most risky work these days is being written not only by African Americans, but Americans of Dominican, Jamaican, and Haitian descent. Not to mention black writers in Africa and Europe. The First African American Writer Many of the earliest published black writers were slaves and abolitionists. First to make a name was Phillis Wheatley, a slave brought from Africa as a child and sold to a Boston merchant. Wheatley spoke no English but by the time she was sixteen, under the tutelage of her owners, had mastered the language. Her interest in literature led her to write and publish Poems on Various Subjects in 1773. Wheatley's work was controversial because its author was a bonded slave; perhaps the next major work written by a slave was Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , which was published in 1845, after Frederick Douglass escaped slavery for the second time. Turn of the Century Intellectuals With literacy and educational opportunities increasing for blacks, the audience for black writers had grown by the turn of the century. Among the most notable writers was W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the original founders of the NAACP, who published a collection of essays titled The Souls of Black Folk. Booker T. Washington, an educator and founder of the Tuskegee Institute, published among other works, Up From Slavery (1901), The Future of the American Negro (1899), Tuskegee and Its People (1905), and My Larger Education (1911). The leading two black intellectuals, Du Bois and Washington actually had opposing views on how blacks could better themselves in society. In the 1920s, black writers and artists in Harlem led a flourishing new movement in literature, theatre, and jazz. James Weldon Johnson edited The Book of American Negro Poetry in 1922, a gathering of some of the period's most talented poets including Claude McCay and Langston Hughes. Perhaps the most recognized writer of the Renaissance, Hughes published his collection of poetry The Weary Blues in 1926, and a novel, Not Without Laughter, in 1930. Jean Toomer was another Renaissance man. Cane, his amalgam of stories, poems, and sketches about black life in rural Georgia and the urban North, was published in 1923. Countee Cullen, Toomer's contemporary, was recognized for his use of traditional poetry forms to illuminate everyday black life. Cullen's major works include Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927), and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927). Black women also contributed to African American works of the Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God came out in the 30s, and Dorothy West published The Living is Easy, a novel detailing an upper-class black family during World War I. The Renaissance paved the way for black writers in subsequent decades. A trinity of particularly notable writers would emerge in the 1940s and 1950s: Novelist Richard Wright, who published an unflinching condemnation of racism in Native Son; his friend Ralph Ellison, who brought readers inside the world of an ordinary black person in Invisible Man; and James Baldwin, who produced Notes of a Native Son—a direct response to Wright's book, and a first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which reflected upon his life in Harlem as the son of a Baptist minister. Civil Writes The Civil Rights movement made a powerful impression on black voices in the 1960s. Baldwin, whose fiction and essays dealt not only with race but sexuality, family, the ex-pat life, and his childhood in the Church, returned from many years in Paris to participate in the burgeoning movement. Many of Baldwin's most significant works were written in the 60s, including Another Country and The Fire Next Time. James Baldwin, whose writing dealt not only with race but sexuality, family, the ex-pat life, and his childhood in the Church, returned from many years in Paris to participate in the burgeoning civil rights movement. Black activists became playwrights—and vice versa—fueling the civil rights movement with their representations of black life on the stage. Lorraine Hansberry, a demure young playwright, nevertheless provided the tinder for the fire with her play A Raisin in the Sun; she became the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Raisin was a tender portrait of a poor black family in Chicago, and was awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1959. Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka also rose to prominence with his risky off-Broadway plays, and Ntozake Shange emerged with her meditation on women, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. In the 70s and 80s, the legacies begun by Phillis Wheatley and furthered by civil rights writers reached the mainstream. Books by black writers routinely topped the best-seller lists. Nobelist Toni Morrison rose to prominence, as did successful black writers such as Alice Walker, Alex Haley, and Maya Angelou. Other distinctive voices such as Gayl Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, and John Edgar Wideman also emerged during these decades—writers whose works sought to move beyond easy categories and encompass the style and vernacular of blacks both in America and abroad. Hyphenated Americans Today, bookstores have brought both ease and complexity to the genre of African American literature. Classifications such as "African American, " "Native American, " "Gay and Lesbian, " etc., have eased readers' searches for specific genre literature, while also limiting the audience for these books. A new generation of young writers has crossed the genre shelves. Whiz kids such as Junot Diaz (Drown), Edwidge Danticat (Krik! Krak!, The Farming of Bones), Patricia Powell (The Pagoda), Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist), and Jacqueline Woodson (Show Way) —writers still in their 30s—have stirred the literary world with writings about Caribbean immigrants, historical novels, and ingenuous metaphors on race and cultural identity.