The Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is receiving this award because of the global importance of his work. According to the committee, which includes the novelists Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz, his contributions to literary theory, philosophy in literature, African letters, postcolonial criticism, and the struggle for human dignity stand among the best of the age. In the words of Jane Anna Gordon, President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, "Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o exemplifies the intellectual and political boldness and courage we encourage and the attention to language and genre that is indispensible to shifting the geography of reason."

The Nicolás Guillén for Philosophical Literature
Frieda Ekotto

Ekotto is receiving this award because of her contributions as a novelist, a theorist of race, sexuality, and criminality, along with her writings on existential themes emerging in the work of Lorraine Hansberry, Jean Genet, and struggles for human dignity, which stands among the best of the age. "Professor Ekotto," adds Jane Anna Gordon, "exemplifies the transnational commitments of the Caribbean Philosophical Association as well as our commitments across multiple genres and disciplinary approaches. Professor Ekotto works brilliantly on women's sexualities in the African context instead of through those imposed on it."

The Nicolás Guillén Award for Outstanding Book in Philosophical Literature
Supriya M. Nair, Pathologies of Paradise: Caribbean Detours. University of Virginia Press, 2013.

The Awards Committee reports that this book "is a rich and compelling analysis of Anglophone Caribbean literature from multidisciplinary, multi-genre and multi-theoretical perspectives that include postcolonial literary theory, psychoanalysis, cultural studies theory, and transnational Caribbean feminist theory. True to the ethos of the Guillén Award for Philosophical Literature, this book broadens and problematizes the scope of Caribbean philosophy through its intersectional approach that subverts colonial and national binaries of the Caribbean as tropical paradise or'infernal stereotype.'"

Past recipients of the Guillén Award includes Wilson Harris, Ramabai Espinet, Edwidge Danticat, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, The Mighty Chalkdust / Hollis Liverpool, Prafulla Kar, Gordon Rohlehr, and Ana Lydia Vega.

The awards will be conferred in a special session of the international conference of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, which will be held in conjunction with the meetings of the Simone de Beauvoir Society and the Jean-Paul Sartre Society. The meeting will take place June 19 to 21, 2014, in St. Louis, Missouri:

http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/1185873/3074d030a0/544419171/8805fd87de/

Information on the awards is also available at:

http://www.caribbeanphilosophicalassociation.org/Nicolas_Guillen_Prize.html