41st NAACP Image Award Nominees for Literature Announced

 The 41st NAACP Image Awards announced it's  Nominees for

Literature Categories

Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction

• "Basketball Jones" – E. Lynn Harris (deceased) (Doubleday)
• "Before I Forget" – Leonard Pitts, Jr. (Agate Bolden)
• "Life is Short But Wide" – J. California Cooper (Doubleday)
• "The Book of Night Women" – Marlon James Riverhead Books)
• "The Long Fall" – Walter Mosley (Riverhead Books)

Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction 

 

• "Brain Surgeon": A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters With Mortality and Miracles – Arnold Mann with Keith Black, MD (Grand Central Publishing)
• "Family Affair: What It Means to be African American Today" – Gil L. Robertson, IV (Agate Bolden) [Big Kudos, to my buddy, Gil. He is a national treasure & has been helpful to my career]
  
• "Freedom in My Heart: Voices From the United States National Slavery Museum" – Cynthia Jacobs Carter (National Geographic Books)
• "In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past" – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Crown)
• "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis" – Al Gore (Rodale Inc.)

Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author

• "3rd Generation Country" – BeNeca Ward (Xlibris Corporation)
• "A Question of Freedom" – R. Dwayne Betts (Avery Books)
• "Black Water Rising" – Attica Locke (Harper)
• "Kiss the Sky: A Novel" – Farai Chideya (Atria Books)
• "Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange" – Amanda Smyth (Three Rivers Press)

Outstanding Literary Work – Biography/Auto-Biography

• "Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud" – Dr. Cornel West (SmileyBooks)
• "Michelle Obama" – Deborah Willis (W. W. Norton)
• "POPS: A Life of Louis" – Terry Teachout (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• "Shooting Stars" – LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger (The Penguin Press)
• "Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne" – James Gavin (Atria Books)

Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional

• "Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man" – Steve Harvey (Amistad)
• "The Conversation: How Black Men & Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships" – Hill Harper (Gotham Books)
• "Down to Business" – Clara Villarosa with Alicia Villarosa (Avery Books)
• "Start Where You Are" – Chris Gardner (Amistad)
• "Your Money or Your Life" – Alvin Hall (Atria Books)

Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

• "Bicycles" – Nikki Giovanni (William Morrow)
• "Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry" – Camille Dungy (The University of Georgia Press)
• "Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem" – Mitchell L. H. Douglas (Red Hen Press)
• "Mixology: National Poetry Series" – Adrian Matejka (Penguin Group)
• "Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall" – Melba Joyce Boyd (Wayne State University Press)

Outstanding Literary Work – Children

• "Child of the Civil Rights Movement" – Paula Young Shelton (Random House Children's Books)
• "Negro Speaks of Rivers" – Langston Hughes (Author), E.B. Lewis (Illustrator) (Disney-Jump at the Sun/Disney Book Group)
• "Our Children Can Soar: A Celebration of Rosa, Barack, and the Pioneers of Change" – Michelle Cook (Bloomsbury Children's Books)
• "Peeny Butter Fudge" – Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison (Paula Wiseman Books/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
• "Sugar Plum Ballerinas: Toeshoe Trouble" – Whoopi Goldberg (Disney-Jump at the Sun/Disney Book Group)

Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens

• "Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice" – Phillip Hoose (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group/Farrar Straus and Giroux)
• "Just Another Hero" – Sharon Draper (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)
• "Mare's War" – Tanita S. Davis (Random House Children's Books)
• "Michelle Obama: Meet the First Lady" – David Bergen Brophy (Collins-An Imprint of HarperCollins Children's Books)
• "Rock and the River" – Kekla Magoon (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing)

 The awards will air live February 26, 2009 on Fox at 8PM