News from Newport, NH

The Trustees of the Richards Free Library and the Judges of the Sarah Josepha Hale award recently announced that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has won the 2009 Hale Award. He will accept the award on October 3, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. at the Newport Opera House.

Henry Louis Gates is an author, literary scholar and historian. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a graduate of Yale University and Cambridge University. He has received many awards including a MacArthur Grant, an American Book Award and was named to Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans” list in 1997.

Former editor of the Concord Monitor Mike Pride says of Gates: “In a long, distinguished career, he has operated with vigor and eloquence in both the academic realm and the popular culture in his quest to enrich the American literary canon with African American voices and to bring these voices to the public.”

For over fifty years, the Sarah Josepha Hale Award, has been given by the trustees of the Richards Free Library, in recognition of a distinguished body of written work in the field of literature and letters. The award honors Sarah Josepha Hale, author, poet, and essayist, who as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine shaped the opinion of nineteenth century American women.