“Visible Man: The Life of Henry Dumas” by Jeffrey Leak, associate professor of English, is the nonfiction recipient of a 2015 Literary Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA).
Published by the University of Georgia Press, “Visible Man: The Life of Henry Dumas” examines the author’s life and writing. Leak interviewed Dumas’s family, friends and other writers who knew the Arkansas-born Dumas. In 1968, Dumas was shot and killed in Harlem months before his 34th birthday by a white transit policeman under circumstances never fully explained. After his death, he became a kind of literary legend but one whose full story was unknown.
The BCALA Literary Awards recognize excellence in adult fiction and nonfiction by African-American authors published in 2014. Recipients will be presented their awards formally during the 2015 annual conference of the American Library Association in San Francisco.
Leak, a native of Charlotte, earned a Ph.D. from Emory University; he completed a bachelor’s degree at Campbell University and a master’s degree at the University of Delaware.