This year, the Arab American Book Award ceremony will be held on Saturday, Sep. 29 at the Arab American National Museum, 13624 Michigan Avenue, Dearborn, Michigan. Further details on the invitation-only event will be released this summer.

In addition to celebrating the winners of the 2012 Awards, this year’s program will honor the life and work of journalist Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist of Lebanese American descent. He will be remembered with a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award.

This national literary competition, the only one of its kind in the U.S., is designed to draw attention to books and authors dealing with the Arab American experience. 

Three winners emerged from the multitude of eligible books submitted for consideration; three honorable mentions were also selected. 

Winner for fiction, Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber; non-fiction award winner, Evelyn Shakir, Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany and Nadine Naber; winner in poetry, Abu Ghraib Arias by Philip Metres. Honorable mentions will be given to Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar; Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader’s Guide edited by Steven Salaita and Transfer by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Further information about the winning books and their authors appears below and at www.arabamericanmuseum.org.