UWI books finalists for Foreword Indies Award

The titles are The First Black Slave Society: Britain’s Barbarity Time in Barbados, 1636-1876 by Hilary McD. Beckles; Tell My Mother I Gone To Cuba: Stories of Early Twentieth-Century Migration from Barbados by Sharon Milagro Marshall; and The UWI Gender Journey: Recollections and Reflections by Joycelin Massiah, Elsa Leo-Rhynie and Barbara Bailey .

Foreword Reviews is an independent media company that hosts its annual awards programme as part of its mission to discover, review and share the best books from small, university, and indie publishers (and authors). Finalists represent the best books published in 2016 based on reviews from Foreword’s editors of over 2,200 individual titles spread across 65 categories, said a media release “Choosing finalists for the Indies is always the highlight of our year, but the choice was more difficult this time around due to the high quality of submissions,” Victoria Sutherland, publisher of Foreword Reviews said in the release .

“Each new book award season proves again how independent publishers are the real innovators in the industry.” According to Joseph B Powell, general manager of the UWI Press, “These books represent important social issues and also symbolise the type of publishing that we at UWI Press want to encourage and foster for public discourse.” Indies finalists move on to final judging by an expert panel of librarians and booksellers selected specifically for each genre .

The judges determine which books will be awarded Foreword Indies Book of the Year in each category .

Winners in each genre, along with Editor’s Choice winners and Foreword’s Indies Publisher of the Year, will be announced during the 2017 American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago on June 24 .