The Literature Awards were celebrated in person for the first time since 2019. The banquet was held during the 2022 ALA Annual Conference at local DC restaurant Asia Nine. Thanks to generous donations, we were able to invite several APALA student members and Spectrum Scholars to attend the banquet for free! Three recipients share their experience at the banquet.
I didn’t know anyone walking into the APALA lit awards, and it instantly felt like a family gathering. Conversation flowed naturally, we chatted about the featured books and authors at the awards, to professional journeys. Our table exchanged Storygraph profiles and bonded over our favorite books. – Gabi Huesca, Spectrum Scholar 2019
Attending the APALA Lit Awards was a memorable experience during my first ALA conference. Not only was it great to see and hear about these great Asian American authors (and read their books on the plane back to California), but it was great to be in community with other Asian American library professionals. As I have an archival concentration, it’s quite rare to see groups of BIPOC professionals in one room, let alone Asian Americans. With the LIT awards, I was able to mingle and have lively conversations with fellow Spectrum Scholars, new professionals, and seasoned ALA attendees as we shared work stories and swapped tips to navigate the conference. – Jason Sarmiento, Spectrum Scholar 2019
Traveling alone makes me paranoid. All throughout the ALA Annual Conference (my first), I was either fifteen minutes early or late to external events depending on my certainty of the event’s existence. Are people going to show up? I could peek in and if no one’s there, I can run. For the Literature Awards, I was fifteen minutes early, walking briskly from a tour at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. I got caught behind a slower-moving group, all jovial voices and laughter in a bubble of familiarity. I tried to get around them. I noticed arms hanging with tote bags. I slowed down. I asked, “Are you headed to the APALA event?” A group of beautiful Asian-Pacific Islander faces turned towards me, smiling: “How could you tell?” Sitting with APALA members at the dinner brought a warmth that I’d been missing during the conference. I sat beside a fellow student member in the midst of librarians with some very impressive resumes. We listened to their stories, to the authors’ stories, and we remembered one of the reasons we were in school in the first place – to provide access to more of our stories. As an online student, I’d never felt more a part of a collective “we” than in that moment, gazing around at the storytellers and storysharers in that room. – Emily Espanol, APALA Student Member