Theatre Library Association Announces 2015 Book Award Winners!
The Theatre Library Association is proud to announce the TLA Book Award winners for English language works of scholarship on theatre, film, and broadcasting, published in 2015.
The 2015 George Freedley Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of live theatre or performance will be awarded to Terry Alford for Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, published by Oxford University Press. A Special Jury Prize will be awarded to Bernth Lindfors for the four-volume biography, Ira Aldridge, the final volume of which was published in 2015 by the University of Rochester Press. The jurors wish to give the publisher special recognition for this ambitious and important project. This year’s Freedley Award Jury consists of James Fisher, Annie Holt, and Don Wilmeth.
The following works were finalists for the 2015 Freedley Award:
- Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson, Ziegfeld and His Follies. University Press of Kentucky, 2015.
- Jim Davis, Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late Georgian and Regency England. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- James Grissom, Follies of God: Tennessee Williams and the Women of the Fog. Knopf, 2015.
- Robert Henke, Poverty & Charity in Early Modern Theater and Performance. University of Iowa Press, 2015.
- Michael Riedel, Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
- Brian Seibert, What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing. Farrah, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
- James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
- Daniel J. Watermeier, American Tragedian: The Life of Edwin Booth. University of Missouri Press, 2015.
- Timothy R. White, Blue-Collar Broadway. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
The 2015 Richard Wall Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance will be awarded to James Layton and David Pierce for The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935, published by The George Eastman Museum. A Special Jury Prize will be awarded to Shelley Stamp for Lois Weber in Early Hollywood, published by University of California Press. This year’s Wall Award Jury consisted of John Calhoun and Stephen Tropiano. Regular Wall juror David Pierce was recused from all discussions regarding his book, The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935. After the Wall Award and Special Jury Prize winners were selected by Calhoun and Tropiano, Pierce re-joined the jury in an advisory capacity, providing recommendations, input, and opinions on books being considered as finalists.
The following works were finalists for the 2015 Wall Award:
- Richard Abel, Menus for Movieland: Newspapers and the Emergence of Film Culture, 1913-1916. University of California Press, 2015.
- Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical. University Press of Kentucky, 2015.
- Allyson Nadia Field, Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film And The Possibility of Black Modernity. Duke University Press Books, 2015.
- Tracey Goessel, The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks. Chicago Review Press, 2015.
- Brian R. Jacobson, Studios Before The System: Architecture, Technology, And The Emergence of Cinematic Space. Columbia University Press, 2015.
- Jacqueline Reich, The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema. Indiana University Press, 2015.
- Nicholas Sammond, Birth of An Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation. Duke University Press Books, 2015.
The 2015 TLA Book Awards will be presented to the winners at a gala celebration in the Café of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in New York City, at 6:30 PM on Friday October 14, 2016. Additional event and registration information to follow.