Best Poetry BCALA Literary Award Winners
  • African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song edited by Kevin Young (The Library of America), 2020
  • We Want Our Bodies Back: Poems by jessica Care moore (Amistad), 2020
  • 1919 by Eve L. Ewing (Haymarket Books), 2019
  • I: New and Selected Poems by Toi Derricotte (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2019
  • Love Songs on a Mixtape by Emeka Barclay (EBook), 2019
  • The Reflection Within the Mirror by Janiece L. Malone (EBook), 2019
  • Door of No Return: Elmina-West Coast Ghana by Neal Hall (Neal Hall), 2018
  • Indecency: Poetry by Justin Phillip Reed (Coffee House Press), 2018
  • If God Invented Baseball: Poems by E. Ethelbert Miller (City Point Press), 2018
  • The New Lynching by Adisa Ajamu II (EBook), 2018
  • Incendiary Art: Poems by Patricia Smith (Northwestern University Press), 2017
  • Counting Descent: Poems by Clint Smith (Write Bloody Publishing), 2016
  • Attraversiamo (let’s cross over) by Monique Ferrell (NYQ Books), 2016
  • On Life by Jacqueline Nicole Harris (Create Space Publishing), 2016
  • Wild Hundreds by Nate Marshall (University of Pittsburgh Press), 2015
  • Streetlights, J’s and Hip Hop: Making of a Poet by King Shakur (Create Space Publishing), 2015
  • Book of Hours: Poems by Kevin Young (Knopf), 2014
  • Chasing Utopia: a Hybrid by Nikki Giovanni (William Morrow), 2013
  • Turn Me Loose: the Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X. Walker (University of Georgia Press), 2013
  • Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place by bell hooks (University Press of Kentucky), 2012
  • If One of Us should Fall by Nicole Terez Dutton (University of Pittsburgh), 2012
  • Mule & Pear by Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Western Michigan University Press), 2011
  • The Armageddon of Funk by Michael Warr (Tia Chucha Press), 2011
BCALA Black Consciousness Principles
BCALA Storytelling Toolkit
Black Lives Matter: Comics as a Powerful Lens for Social Justice
Justice, Power, & Voter Engagement in Libraries
Counting Black Communities: Census 2020 & Libraries
In celebration to foster connection, cultivation, & collaboration we are sharing the link to our virtual summit that was held on May 15-16, 2020.

State Grants