Reception Set for Winners of American Book Awards

Winners of the ninth annual American Book Awards will be honored at a ceremony and reception at 7:30 tonight in the Kensington East/West Ballroom of the Sheraton-Anaheim.

Sponsor of the awards is the Before Columbus Foundation, a nonprofit, Berkeley-based organization dedicated to encouraging and recognizing cultural diversity in American literature.

The 1988 winners are: Jimmy Santiago Baca, for “Martin and Meditations on the South Valley” (New Directions); Daisy Bates, “The Long Shadow of Little Rock” (University of Arkansas Press); Allison Blakely, “Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought” (Howard University Press); David Halberstam, “The Reckoning” (Avon/William Morrow); Marlon Hom, “Songs of Gold Mountain” (University of California Press); and Salvatore La Puma, “The Boys of Bensonhurst (University of Georgia Press).

Also: Wing Tek Lum, “Expounding the Doubtful Points” (Bamboo Ridge Press); Toni Morrison, “Beloved” (Alfred A. Knopf); Charles Olson, “The Collected Poems of Charles Olson” (University of California Press); Edward Sanders, “Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Poems 1961-1985” (Coffee House Press); Kesho Scott, Cherry Muhanji and Egyirba High, “Tight Spaces” (Spinsters/Aunt Lute); Ronald Sukenick, “Down and In” (Beech Tree Books/William Morrow); Gerald Vizenor, “Griever: An American Monkey King in China” (Fiction Collective); and Opal Whiteley, “The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow” (Warner Books).