The University of the West Indies Press is pleased to announce that 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 have been recognised as finalists in the nineteenth annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.  

Foreword Reviews—an independent media company—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.

“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,” said Victoria Sutherland, Publisher of Foreword Reviews. “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 INDIE Publisher of the Year, will be announced during the 2017 American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago on 24 June 24, 2017.

About Foreword

Founded in 1998, Foreword Magazine, Inc., doing business as Foreword Reviews, is an independent media company featuring a Folio: Award—winning print magazine, a stable of e-newsletters and an online platform. Foreword exclusively covers small, university, and independent (non-“Big 5”) publishers, the books they publish, and the creators they work with. Foreword is based in Traverse City, Michigan, USA, and has employees and writers all over the world.

About The UWI

Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged, regional University with well over 40,000 students. Today, The UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with four campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Open Campus. The UWI has faculty and students from more than 40 countries and collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. The UWI’s seven priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and take into account such over-arching areas of concern to the region as environmental issues, health and wellness, gender equity and the critical importance of innovation. For more information, visit www.uwi.edu

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)