The 91视频 College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) and the Department of English are pleased to announce that Associate Professor of English Francine J. Harris is the winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award for poetry. She received this honor for her most recent work, 鈥淗ere is the Sweet Hand鈥� (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020).
鈥淭he National Book Critics Circle Award is among the pre-eminent literary awards in the country,鈥� said Paula Myrick Short, UH senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. 鈥淭his honor, in addition to recognizing the considerable artistic accomplishments of Francine J. Harris, further establishes UH鈥檚 reputation as a prime destination for the best writers in the nation.鈥�
鈥淗ere is the Sweet Hand鈥� explores how race, expression and isolation affect females in America. Harris has a long history of personal involvement in social justice, beginning with her early days as a prominent voice on Detroit community radio. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, including McSweeney鈥檚, Ploughshares, Poetry, Meridian, Indiana Review, Callaloo and Boston Review. A 2008 Cave Canem fellow, she later won the 2014 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest and was awarded a 2015 NEA Fellowship.
Harris acknowledges that she has been inspired by a wide range of poets, from the naturalists like Robert Frost and Walt Whitman to the confessionalists like Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds. 鈥淏ut at heart, I am a child of the Black arts movement: Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Amiri Baraka, all the Broadside poets, since I am from Detroit, and Robert Hayden,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hat I carry from them is their belief that poems could change the world, the way they celebrated Black folks and our resilience through their poetry and especially how they retooled language to make it new, exciting and revolutionary. It was an immense gift 鈥� what those writers gave me when I was young and struggling to make things make sense.鈥�
Poets who receive major book awards find their work is taught more often and are more often anthologized, Harris notes. 鈥淪o this award is likely to increase my visibility and connect me to more readers, which is fantastic!鈥�
鈥淚 am incredibly pleased that the NBCC has recognized Francine for the excellence of her latest work,鈥� said Daniel P. O鈥機onnor, Ph.D., interim dean of CLASS. 鈥淩acial justice, women鈥檚 rights and LGBTQ equality were at the center of the national conversation in 2020 and continues, so it is only fitting that the 2020 NBCC Awards honored a tireless advocate for African American, female and LGBTQ artists.鈥�
UH alumnus Bryan Washington鈥檚 latest novel, 鈥淢emorial,鈥� also claimed an honorable mention in the NBCC Awards鈥� fiction category. The NBCC Awards are considered among the most respected literary honors in America; past recipients include Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison. In 2019, the NBCC awarded UH Arte P煤blico Press, the nation鈥檚 largest publisher of U.S.-based Hispanic authors, the prestigious Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.