The 2020 Lillian Smith Book Awards

The Lillian Smith Book Awards are sponsored by the Southern Regional Council, University of Georgia Libraries, DeKalb County Public Library/The Georgia Center for the Book, and Piedmont College. The awards are presented annually at the Decatur Book Festival.

Selected by a panel of judges, nominated books represent outstanding creative achievements worthy of recognition because of their literary merit, moral vision, and honest representation of the South, its people, problems, and promises. The Lillian Smith Book Awards honors those authors who, through their writing, carry on Smith’s legacy of elucidating the condition of racial and social inequity and proposing a vision of justice and human understanding that represents the ideals of a racially just society.

The 2020 recipients of the Lillian Smith Book Award are Jelani M. Favors, for Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, published by the University of North Carolina Press, and Brandon K. Winford, for John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights, published by the University Press of Kentucky.

The virtual award ceremony is free to attend, but registration is required.