JJA member Ron Scott, writer for New York Amsterdam News
and a frequent presenter of NYC and Brooklyn Jazz Hero Awards, has himself being honored with the Walter and Lilian Lowenfels Award for Criticism by the Before Columbus Foundation, which cites its goals as being “to provide recognition and a wider audience for the wealth of cultural and ethnic diversity that constitutes American writing.”
Scott joins 19 other recipients of these 47th annual American Book Awards, including Matt Shipp for his book Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings (Autonomedia), which has also won a JJA 2026 Book of the Year Award, and Stephen Colbert, for his anti-censorship activism.
The Board of the Before Columbus Foundation is a coterie of prestigious authors, among them novelists Viet Thanh Nguyen, Marlon James and Ishmael Reed, poet-activists Carolyn Forche, Joy Harjo and Juan Felipe Herrera, and producer-writer Margaret Porter Troupe. In its press release, the BCF says:
“The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity; the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. The
Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers.”The JJA says “Amen to that” and congratulates Ron Scott!
