Joy Reid and Percival Everett are among winners of the 46th annual American Book Awards

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Former MSNBC host Joy Reid and authors Percival Everett and John Edgar Wideman are among this years’ recipients of the 46th annual American Book Awards, which celebrate diversity in American art and culture. The awards are presented by the Before Columbus Foundation, the nonprofit that author-playwright Ishmael Reed helped found in 1976.

Reid, who left MSNBC in February soon after the network canceled her prime time show “The ReidOut, was awarded the foundation’s anti-censorship prize. Wideman, an acclaimed fiction and nonfiction writer since the 1960s, has won a lifetime achievement award. Honorees for current works include Everett for “James,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning retelling of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”; Kaveh Akbar for “Martyr!”; Danzy Senna for “Colored Television” and Claire Messud for “This Strange Eventful History.”

Other recipients announced Monday ranged from Amy M. Alvarez for her poetry collection “Makeshift Altar” to Sarah Lewis’ nonfiction “The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America.” Penguin Random House editor Erroll McDonald, whose authors have include Wideman and Nobel laureates Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka, won the editor/publisher award.

“The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions,” the foundation’s announcement reads in part. “The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity; the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process.”

Previous winners include bell hooks,Dave Eggers and the new poet laureate, Arthur Sze.