News & Features » October 2013 » Bernice L. McFadden’s Gathering of Waters a Finalist for 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!
Bernice L. McFadden’s Gathering of Waters a Finalist for 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award!
Congratulations to Bernice L. McFadden, who was named a finalist for the 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Fiction) for her acclaimed novel, Gathering of Waters! The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award honors the year’s best writing in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to published writers of African descent. Bernice is a three-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist for her novels The Warmest December, Nowhere Is a Place, and Gathering of Waters.
Gathering of Waters was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2012; a finalist for a Phillis Wheatley Fiction Book Award; a New York Times Editors’ Choice; and a Go On Girl! April 2013 Book Pick.
Jesmyn Ward at the New York Times Book Review gave Gathering of Waters a glowing review, saying:
“McFadden works a kind of miracle—not only do [her characters] retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises . . . Beautiful and evocative, Gathering of Waters brings three generations to life . . . The real power of the narrative lies in the richness and complexity of the characters. While they inhabit these pages they live, and they do so gloriously and messily and magically, so that we are at last sorry to see them go, and we sit with those small moments we had with them and worry over them, enchanted, until they become something like our own memories, dimmed by time, but alive with the ghosts of the past, and burning with spirits.”
A free excerpt of Gathering of Waters is included in Akashic’s Bernice L. McFadden digit, which can be downloaded here.
Congratulations, Bernice!
Posted: Oct 30, 2013
Category: News | Tags: award, Bernice L. McFadden, Digit, finalist, Gathering of Waters, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Jesmyn Ward, New York Times Book Review, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December