2010 Arab American Book Awards: When Did This Happen?

I just heard about the Arab American Book Awards yesterday, via Asia Writes.

I guess I missed the announcement in Publishing Perspectives, and anywhere else it might’ve run. Perhaps the winners were announced in late May? That would be fitting, I think, since the “Adult Fiction” winner was Etel Adnan, and it seemed that May was her month: two of her books were re-issued, a performance piece based on her work played in Beirut, there was a conference about her, and her art was featured at the the Sfeir-Semler gallery.

Adnan won the award for her Master of the Eclipse, out from Interlink last year.

Other winners: Gregory Orfalea won the “Adult Nonfiction” award for Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family, Place, and Politics and Dunya Mikhail won the poetry award for Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea. And although all these are termed “adult” prizes, I can find no awards for children’s literature.

Past winners can be found not on the Arab American Museum website, but on this Wikipedia listing.

And, speaking of things I missed, Al Jadid seems to have finally updated their website. There’s an interesting piece by Andrea Shalal-Esa on “The Politics of Getting Published: The Continuing Struggle of Arab-American Writers.”