‘Book of Addis’ Wins Phillis Wheatley Award!
NEW YORK, NY—July 18, 2017
On July 15, 2017, during the 19th annual Harlem Book Fair, Brooke Obie’s debut novel, Book of Addis: Cradled Embers won the Phillis Wheatley Book Award for First Fiction.
“I am thrilled to receive the First Fiction award from the Phillis Wheatley Book Awards,” Obie said of the honor. “To receive an award named after the legendary Phillis Wheatley and to share in the legacy of Wheatley Award winners Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Gordon Parks and Terry McMillan is beyond a dream for a debut, self-published author.”
This is the second award for Book of Addis: Cradled Embers. In April, Obie won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award for self-published fiction. She will accept the monetary award at a ceremony on August 10 in Atlanta, GA, during the National Conference of African American Librarians.
ABOUT BOOK OF ADDIS:
When 17-year-old enslaved girl Addis accidentally kills her enslaver, the first president of the young country Amerika, she unwittingly becomes the face of the greatest conflict in the nation’s short history. On the run for her life, with unlikely friends and a world of enemies, Addis becomes the most wanted person alive and a global symbol of hope for enslaved people longing for freedom.
Hailed as “brilliant” by award-winning author Susan Cheever and “raw, breath-taking and inspiring” by the BCALA, Book of Addis has won the BCALA Literary Award for self-published fiction and the Phillis Wheatley Book Award for First Fiction. This epic tale of love, loss and the cost of liberation has been featured in Ebony, TeenVogue.com, NBCNews.com, Very Smart Brothas, Lenny Letter, SiriusXM and more and is the first book of a 3-part literary series.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brooke C. Obie, JD, MFA, is the award-winning author of Book of Addis: Cradled Embers. Her work has appeared in Ebony, The Los Angeles Review of Books, MarieClaire.com and more. Brooke has an MFA in Fiction from The New School and has attended writing workshops with Columbia University in Paris, France and the Callaloo Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters at Oxford University. Brooke lives happily in Harlem where she’s working on the Book of Addis sequel.
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