Jacqueline Allen Trimble, chair of the department of languages and literatures at Alabama State University in Montgomery was named as the recipient of the Seven Sister Book Award for the best book of the year. Dr. Trimble was honored for her book American Happiness (NewSouth Books, 2016), a collection of poetry. The prize committee said that Professor Trimble’s poems were “written with passion and beauty. This is a collection that should be required reading for every American today. With truth and loveliness, theses poems will take your breath away.”
“The award means that someone who doesn’t know me at all, complete strangers, read my work and found it worthy of their time and attention,” Dr. Trimble said. “Further, they recommended it to others and called it ‘required reading.’ This means everything to me.”
The Seven Sisters Book Awards were established in 2015 by author Lynne Hinton to honor women writers. Hinton, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, is the author of 20 books, including the bestselling novel, Friendship Cake (Harper, 2002).
Dr. Trimble is a graduate of Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alabama.
