
          The Lillian_Smith Awards for 1990
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 12, No. 5, 1990, p. 5
          
          The Lillian_Smith Awards are presented yearly to recognize and
encourage outstanding writing about the American South. Smith long
distinguished herself as one of the region's foremost advocates of
human rights and one of its most sensitive students. She wrote many
works, both fiction and non-fiction. Hers is the rare type of topical
literature that remains relevant year after year because it confronts
deeply rooted social problems and promotes a recognition of their very
human roots and dynamics. The Lillian_Smith awards for fiction and
non-fiction have been presented since 1968. The recipients do not have
to be Southerners, but their honored work must be about the South.
          Dori Sanders is the 1990 recipient of the
Lillian_Smith Award for fiction. Sanders is the author of the award
winning novel Clover. Born in York County, South
Carolina, Sanders attended York County Public Schools and later
studied at community colleges in Prince George's and Montgomery
counties in Maryland. She divides her time between her writing,
working on her family's peach farm, an open air market, and as an
associate banquet manager in Maryland. Besides being featured in
numerous national magazines and newspapers, Clover is being translated
for publication in Japanese, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and German and
Walt Disney studio has acquired movie rights. Algonquin Books of
Chapel_Hill is the publisher of this work.
          Wayne Flynt is the 1990 recipient of the Lillian
Smith Award for non-fiction. Flynt, a native of Alabama, is currently
the Hollifield Professor of History at Auburn University and a Baptist
minister. In the sixties Flynt was a civil_rights activist within the
Baptist church. After the Movement he established a distinguished
career as teacher and author. In 1989 he was nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize for Poor But Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites, which
utilized scholarly research and oral history to document the
historical, economic, and socio-political implications of Southern
poverty. His chronicle of how poor Euro-Americans struggled to retain
their dignity and make sense of their world is one of the great dramas
of the story of the American people. This work is published by the
University of Alabama Press.
        
