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Lynn Andriani in Publishers Weekly, 2/11/2008 reported that the inaugural Essence Literary Awards took place Feb 7 at Le Parker Meridien in New York City. Click here for more details. Terry McMillan received a lifetime achievement award and Bishop T.D. Jakes received a "President's Award." The event also launched Essence magazine's Save Our Libraries Campaign.
Winners:

Fiction: The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Memoir: Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
Inspiration: Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy
Nonfiction: Supreme Discomfort by Michael Fletcher and Kevin Merida
Current Affairs: An Unbroken Agony by Randall Robinson
Photography: Daufuskie Island by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe
Children’s: Marvelous World by Troy Cle
Poetry: Duende by Tracy K. Smith
Storyteller of the year: L.A. Banks, author of The Darkness and other books

According to the New York Times, the winners of the 2008 Lincoln Prize for American History are:

* The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln
and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics by James Oakes
* Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private
Letters by Elizabeth Brown Pryor

Labels: Essence Literary Awards, Lincoln Book Prize