Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today that the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction will be awarded to Jesmyn Ward. The 45-year-old Mississippian is the two-time winner of the National Book Award for the novels "Salvage the Bones" and "Sing, Unburied, Sing" among other major literary awards.
The papers of Leonard Downie Jr., who started as an intern at The Washington Post in the 1960s concluded his career with a 17-year run as executive editor, are now available for researchers in the Library's Manuscript Division. They offer insight on the Post's inner workings on such stories as Watergate, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Valerie Plame affair, 9/11, the Unabomber and much more.
The Library preserves some of the papers of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, the visionary leader of the Bamum kingdom in modern-day Cameroon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Njoya's royal family had ruled their region of the grasslands for hundreds of years. Under pressure from the colonial powers of Germany and then France, he created the first map of the kingdom, a language, an alphabet and a religion. He was a renowed patron of the arts, encouraging teachers, sculptors and artisans.
The film "Top Gun: Maverick" has caught the nation's imagination 36 years after the first "Top Gun" did, setting box office records. The Library placed the original film in the National Recording Registry and has several items, including the original print of the film, preserved in its collections.
The Library of Congress is now home to a huge collection of nearly 100 pocket globes -- miniature globes that were fashionable art objects from the 17th to 19th centuries, during the age of exploration. The globes, perhaps three inches in diameter, were made of everything from ivory to papier mache, some housed in expensive sharkskin boxes. The family and foundation of the late Jay I. Kislak donated 74 pocket globes to the Library recently, adding to the collector's prodigious donations to the Library's Geography and Map Division.
The Library's Free to Use and Reuse sets of curated prints and photographs include subjects such as travel, autumn and Halloween, weddings, movie palaces and dozens more. This set of athletes in action include baseball icon Jackie Robinson, early race car driver Joan Newton Cuneo and women hurdlers.
The Library's Veterans History Project houses thousands of photographs taken by U.S. soldiers. Joseph Beimfohr's photos let viewers peek into his war experiences in Iraq -- a time that included losing both legs in an explosion. The Library's latest research guide to military photos includes thousands taken in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Letters in the Library’s stunning collection of correspondence that has helped shape the world as we know it, stretching back more than a thousand years. Written by the famous and the forgotten in any number of languages and dialects from all over the world the letters are on everything from ancient vellum to dime store postcards. It includes letters from Wolfgang Mozart, Rosa Parks, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, George Washington and thousands of others. One of the most significant is a papal bull from Pope Alexander VI, giving Spain title to any "new lands" they might discover in the "new world," setting the stage for hundreds of years of colonialism.
The Better Angels Society, the Library of Congress and the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation established the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film in 2019 in order to help promote historical documentaries that might not otherwise have a path to sharing their work more widely. The winner receives a $200,000 finishing grant to help with the final production and distribution of the film. In addition, one runner-up receives a grant of $50,000 and three to four finalists each receive $25,000. These funds are used for finishing, marketing, distribution and outreach. Submissions for this year's prize are now open.
