Great news for Black authors worldwide this week.
Firstly, on Tuesday, Jamaican author Marlon James was announced the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his A Brief History of Seven Killings. The novel depicts an attempted assassination of late singer Bob Marley and delves into the crack cocaine epidemic in the U.S.
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The Booker Prize is a prestigious award given to works published in English and in the United Kingdom. James is the first author of Jamaican descent to take home the 50,000 pound ($77,000) prize.
James said that he hopes the win brings "more attention to what's coming out of Jamaica and the Caribbean, because I think there are some brand-new voices coming out who are exploring contemporary society, who are exploring what's beyond politics, what's beyond colonialism," the Associated Press reports.
In other author news, African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates was nominated for a National Book Award, a U.S. based honor, for his book Between the World and Me, a memoir that consists of a series of letters to his teenage son. Winners will be announced on Nov. 18 in New York City.
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(Photo:Alastair Grant/ AP Photo)
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