Introducing the 2021 Prowda Literary Champions!
March 25, 2021
At SAL, we envision a future in which story and language continuously and courageously revitalize equity, justice, and belonging. Since 2014, The Prowda Literary Champion Awards, selected by a group of literary visionaries, have celebrated the individuals and organizations that do just that. Every year, the Prowda Awards recognize leaders in our community who are providing new ways of encountering reading and writing, helping make Seattle a more vibrant place for all.
Today, we are delighted to announce the eighth annual Literary Champion Awardees: writer and activist Ijeoma Oluo and Jack Straw Cultural Center. Watch the video below to celebrate these visionaries along with us!
About Ijeoma Oluo
Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, activist, and the New York Times best-selling author of So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) and Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (2020). Oluo is also a founder of the Seattle Artist Relief Fund, a fund that is dedicated to supporting BIPOC artists in the Seattle area during the coronavirus pandemic by providing relief funds. Just this week, Oluo announced that she is set to write and publish a third book titled Be a Revolution.
About Jack Straw
Jack Straw Cultural Center, led by Executive Director Joan Rabinowitz, is the northwest’s only non-profit multidisciplinary audio arts center, providing a production facility unlike any other in the region for local artists who work creatively with sound. Since 1962, Jack Straw has fostered the communication of arts, ideas, and information to diverse audiences through audio media, providing creation and production opportunities in audio media, including radio, theater, film, video, music, and literature.
About the Prowda Awards
The Prowda Literary Champion Award is named for Sherry Prowda, SAL’s founder and first Executive Director. It was created to honor Prowda’s vision of a future in which imaginative acts such as reading, writing, and creative thinking are indispensable to a curious, engaged, democratic society. For more information on the Prowda Awards and this year’s winners, visit SAL’s website.