UNT English doctoral student wins prestigious Legacy Award

by | Nov 11, 2016 | News

DENTON (UNT), Texas – Sanderia Faye, University of North Texas Ph.D. student in English, has won the nation’s top honor for a debut novel by an African American writer – the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation 2016 Legacy Award.

Faye earned the honor in the Debut Fiction category for her book Mourner’s Bench (University of Arkansas Press), a novel about a woman who gets caught up in the 1960s civil rights movement as told by her 8-year-old daughter. The book is inspired by her love of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird which often made her ask herself, “What if Scout Finch was African American? What would that story be?”