The Creative Writing program at North Carolina A&T State University has announced the finalists for this year’s Sanchez-Baraka Prize competition.
First place winner and recipient of the $250 prize is Carolyn Beard Whitlow of Greensboro for the poem, “Birthright.” The first runner up is C. Liegh McInnis of Clinton, Miss. for the poem, “What Good Are Poems” and Marty Silverthorn of Greenville, N.C. is the second runner up for the poem, “Swimming Pool.”
On the anniversary of the A&T Four Greensboro Sit-in Movement and the onset of Black History Month, the Creative Writing program celebrates the courageous legacy of African-American literary achievement by honoring the legacies of two literary giants – Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka.
Their literary works and personal life energies have been spent in service to the upliftment of black people worldwide and to the struggle for freedom, justice and equality for all oppressed peoples. Their scholarship activism and poetry have reminded the world about the sacredness of human dignity and the need to preserve it.
