 The 2020 Nebraska Book Awards will honor authors and publishers of books with a Nebraska connection published in 2019. The 2020 Award for Non-Fiction Immigration Story is the story of Akoi Agao, one of the most successful high school athletes in Nebraska history and a South Sudanese refugee. Citizen Akoi, Basketball and the Making of a South Sudanese American by Steve Morance, published by University of Nebraska Press. Steve Morance, author of Citizen Akoi, Basketball and the Making of a South Sudanese American. It's the story of Akoi Agao, a South Sudanese refugee who came to America as a young boy and became a basketball star at Omaha Central High School. I'm going to read a passage from Chapter 17. At center court, as Akoi readied for tip-off, he slowed the moment and scanned the sold out Devaney Center. He was on the verge of an unprecedented achievement in Nebraska High School basketball, his fourth Class A championship. Close by were his teammates and coaches, the guys he huddled with before each game fist raised and chanted one, two, three, family. He would miss this group, this band of brothers, though he would not miss being run like a dog and kicked out of practice by barons. Beyond was the student section, the kids who shared the classrooms and hallways of Nebraska's oldest high school and who were now in full roar. There were his teachers, even the ones who didn't like basketball but attended as a show of support and there were the administrators for whom he cheerfully served as ambassador of Central. His high school was special, he was sure of it, a downtown melting pot that had survived fickle economics and politics and endured wave upon wave of nostalgic alumni. There was Scott Hammer, Sven Gali of his grassroots select teams, summer camps, air travel and hotel rooms, his world apart from high school. There were Dave and Ann Shuland, Salt of the Earth, who embraced him as a virtual son-in-law. A coy's gaze settled on their daughter Lottie and for maybe the millionth time he contemplated her fresh athletic beauty. He considered the Hammers and Shulands his adoptive families, even though their pigmentations and backgrounds were as different from his as night and day. Like Heavens their refrigerators were as open and welcoming as they were. There were the media, he had courted and cultivated to mutual satisfaction and there, a raid around the court, were the photographers to whom he would grant one last iconic image to remember him by. Then his eyes came upon the object of his deepest affection and concern, Adah Makhir, his mother. She had come to Lincoln in his honor to watch a game she barely comprehended. He thought about the miracle of her presence at his final high school game. She had gotten out of Sudan with little more than the clothes on her back, 14 years earlier, a refugee of a violent civil war that had killed hundreds of thousands. She had gotten him out too, he owed her his life. In 2002 he owed his father Madhu Agow, who was not among the familiar faces this day, because he worked at a meat plant on weekends for time and a half. His family had limped ashore in Omaha at the mercy of strangers and had found both hardship and generosity. Each day was a lesson in a new culture and a reminder of the old. Now he felt responsible for his parents and five soon to be six younger siblings. This game was as much for them as for him. They were his duty and they were his dilemma. Akoya Gao was about to jump tip off to the Nebraska Class A basketball championship, another step in his remarkable journey out of Africa. Where it led, he knew not, but on this day, in this moment, he would play the game he loved to fulfill a prophecy and make history. Thank you to Nebraska Center for the Book and the Nebraska Library Commission for sponsoring the celebration of Nebraska books. And thank you to University of Nebraska Press for publishing Citizen Akoy. I'll sign off with a comment from Dr. Seuss, fill your house with stacks of books in all the crannies and all the nooks. As a new deal program, the Federal Writers Project aimed to put unemployed writers, teachers, and librarians to work. The contributors were to collect information, write essays, conduct interviews, and edit material with the goal of producing guidebooks in each of the then 48 states and U.S. territories. Telling this story and winning for nonfiction Nebraska Perseverance is Nebraska During the New Deal, the Federal Writers Project in the Cornhusker State by Marilyn Irvin Holt, published by Bison Books. Hello, I'm Marilyn Holt. Thank you, Nebraska Center for the Book for this award, and thank you, University of Nebraska Press for publishing the book. Nebraska During the New Deal, the Federal Writers Project in the Cornhusker State. Writing and writing this book was frustrating, maddening, and fun. One of the most pleasant parts was reading all the publications that the Federal Writers Project in Nebraska produced. Folk War, Pioneer Stories, Town Histories, the State Guide, and so much more. The people who produced this material were a real mixed lot. Their backgrounds varied, their skills and their talents differed, but each brought something to the project. Rudolph Unland, who was with the project from almost the beginning, said that the group contained eccentric ingeniouses. Marie Sandow, who was a project consultant, called them a motley crew of writers. I think she meant that affectionately. Whatever they were, they were people caught up in the worst economic depression the country had ever seen. They had to wonder when and if things would improve. Was there light at the end of the tunnel? This award recognizes perseverance, not my perseverance for writing the book, but the perseverance of the people in the Federal Writers Project, perseverance. It's a good word for us to think about today. I'm sorry that we all couldn't meet in Lincoln. I would love to see and meet you face to face, but hopefully in the not too distant future, my husband and I will again be able to visit our favorite Nebraska places. Again, thank you for this award. It's very gratifying. Winning for non-fiction Native American history is the first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians in their profound role in shaping America's history. Lakota America, a new history of indigenous power by Pekka Hamalainen, published by Yale University Press.