For book lovers, the Harlem Book Fair offers that rarest of treats: A full range of diverse entry points into the world of books and their creators. In the past, I've attended workshops and author panels at the Schomburg Center, Countee Cullen Library, Harlem YMCA, Thurgood Marshall Academy, and Columbia University Law School. I've always made certain to stroll along 135th Street, between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards, with the crowd of 30,000 other bibliophiles, sampling some of the thousands of books on display and talking with many of their authors. I usually end up at the Main Stage, directly across from the Schomburg, where the live, on-stage literary, musical, spoken word performances electrify hundreds, turning that area of the Harlem Book Fair (HBF) into a huge block party, with people moving to the beat or shouting "Tell it! Preach!"

This year, I chose a more intimate experience with books and authors: I attended the Phillis Wheatley Book Awards, which kicked off the HBF and was held at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. And, on Sunday morning, instead of my usual church appearance, I opted to head to the Hotel Beacon for the Invitational Author Brunch, which concluded this year's HBF. These two events might be seen as framing or perhaps serving as bookends for my HBF experience this year. More than ever before, social media – especially Facebook and Twitter --were also keys to how I chose to participate in and share about #HBF 2015.

Another highlight: Long before I knew they were even nominees, I interviewed two of the seven winners of this year's Phillis Wheatley Awards for What's The 411TV. First-time author Selma Jackson's GRANNY'S HELPER won in the Young Readers category; and Tiphanie Yanique's LAND OF FEAR AND DROWNING (Penguin/Riverhead, 2014) won for Fiction.

Jackson, who self-published her first book, tackles racial discrimination, physical disability, gender privilege, family tragedies, and more, with such gentle, sure-handed confidence that children from ages 8 to 11 will fall in love with the title characters -- Young Selma and her blind granny.

What's The 411's Book Editor Luvon Roberson; Selma Jackson, author of Granny's Helper; and Ansel Pitcairn, Illustrator, Granny's Helper; Photo Credit: Luvon Roberson

Yanique's compelling novel, which took her 11 years to complete, is a powerful homage to what it means to be "African American," as viewed through the three-way lens of her three narrators. Her powerful storytelling opens a way for me to recognize Virgin Islanders as "African-Americans" as my enslaved forebears on the US Mainland and to re-envision spaces and places we each call "home."

What's The 411 Book Editor Luvon Roberson and award-winning author, Tiphanie Yanique. Photo Credit: Luvon Roberson

 Read about how I first learned of Yanique's work in 2014, at the Harlem Book Fair

Harlem Book Fair founder Max Rodriquez offered a moving introduction to the Awards event and Columbia University's Associate Dean, Office of Community Outreach, School of the Arts Marcia Sells opened with a warm welcome to the 200+ people filling the theatre. Hosted by WBGO host Sheila E. Anderson, the Wheatley Book Awards also honored acclaimed poet-activist Nikki Giovanni and renowned illustrator Jerry Pinkney with Legacy Awards. Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney delivered a memorable tribute to Jerry Pinkney – in the form of a children's story about "Daddy Lion."

Ancestral music performed by Atiba Wilson and the Befo' Quotet, vocalist Imani Uzuri's call and response selection, and the moving choreopoem enacted by Sherri Pullman, Chantal Maurice, and Vesta Walker made for the evening's festive, entertaining flow. Behind-the-scenes, writer and media director Pittershawn Palmer was in constant motion, helping to ensure the success of this must-attend annual literary event.

Choreopoem (L to R) Chantal Maurice; Sherri Pullum; and Vesta Walker. Photo Credit: Luvon Roberson

 CLOSING LINES... 2015 Phillis Wheatley Awards

"I love being touched by a book." – Max Rodriquez, founder, QBR Harlem Book Fair

Max Rodriguez, Founder, QBR, the producer of the Wheatley Book Awards and the Harlem Book Fair on stage with Marcia Sells; Associate Vice President, Office of Community Outreach, Columbia University School of the Arts. Photo Credit: Luvon Roberson

The Phillis Wheatley Book Awards, named for the first published African-American female writer, is given for literary work and literary advocacy that transcends culture, boundary, and perception.

2015 Phillis Wheatley Awards 21 Finalists & 7 Winners

First Fiction
Adinkrahene: Fear of a Black Planet by Jeffery A. Faulkerson
Born at Dawn by Nigeria Lockley -- Winner
Shifting Allegiances: A Nigerian's Story of Nigeria, America & Culture by Amaka Lily

Fiction
Every Day Is for the Thief by Teju Cole
Glorious Sunset by Ava Bleu
Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique -- Winner

First Fiction
Daffodil: A Mother's Journey by Demetria Hayes
No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant by Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Regina Anderson, Harlem Renaissance Librarian by Ethelene Whitmire -- Winner

Nonfiction
A Light Shines in Harlem: New York's First Charter School and the Movement It Led by Mary C. Bounds -- Winner
Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine by Dr. Louis W. Sullivan
Businessman First: Remembering Henry G. Parks, Jr., 1916-1989 Capturing the Life of A Businessman Who Was African American by Maurice W. Dorsey

Poetry
Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the Life of Anna Murray Douglass by M. Nzadi Keita
City of Eternal Spring by Afaa Michael Weaver-- Winner
Tears For My Ancestors by Malik Canty

Young Readers
Granny's Helper by Selma Jackson -- Winner
Midnight and the Man Who Had No Tears by Tiffany Golden
Tate and His Historic Dream by Bernard C. Turner

Young Adult Readers
Dear Diary, The Bullying Won't Stop by Delicia B. Davis
The Madman of Piney Woods by Christopher Paul Curtis -- Winner
Willow by Tonya Cherie Hegamin

Legacy Award Winners
Nikki Giovanni
Jerry Pinkney

To learn more about Harlem Book Fair, visit www.Harlembookfair.com.

First Sighting at Harlem Book Fair; Second at NYU.

Tiphanie Yanique. I first met her at the Harlem Book Fair's Fiction Festival, held at Columbia University in July 2014. Yanique is on a panel called Coming from Far: Caribbean Writers on Home and Otherness. Her book, LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, published by Riverhead/ Penguin, is just hitting bookstores – and the world. Over the next hour and a half, she tells us secrets that too often authors keep hidden. Not only the secrets about her how her family influenced her book, but the secrets about how writers create:

Yanique disclosed that many in her Virgin Island family didn't want her to write her book as she initially envisioned it. It revealed too much, better kept inside the family.

Yanique talked about how she was caught in the tangle of love of family on the one hand, and the irrepressible need for her own voice to break free, on the other.

Ultimately, it took Yanique several years to at last find a way to tell her story, by accommodating her family's need for privacy and her desire for self-expression.

That time of flux must have been painful for her loved ones – and for her.

Next Sighting of Yanique...

Now, several months later, I am listening to Yanique read from LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, the book that came out of her time of struggle. We are at New York University, in a lovely townhouse – the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House. People file in, quickly filling up the chairs. I'm beneath the steep staircase, rising along a wall that's lined with framed photographic portraits of acclaimed writers who gaze out like orishas: Toni Morrison is among them.

Can Yanique see those writer-creators from where she stands at the podium, before the filled-to-capacity audience?

She begins by paying homage to NYU for providing space exclusively for writers, with its Lillian Vernon House, and by giving "gratitude" for her years in this space as a student. It's here when she reveals that it took her 11 years to write the book. I recall her revelations in July, as part of the Harlem Book Fair panel about her struggle to create the book. I did not know it took so long. Eleven years to write LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING!

At the reading, she reveals that her grandmother, not her parents, raised her, and says "my aunts and cousin fed me." They threatened to "disown" her after reading the manuscript she sent them, nine years into writing the book. "I made the changes they needed me to make. I think I made a richer book because of it."

Yanique says the book, set between 1916 to late-1960s, parallels "what's going on in Ferguson" today. And, that this 50-year timeframe is "in my mind, when the Virgin Islands become Americanized. Along comes World War II and then the Civil Rights Movement. It gave Virgin Islands the opportunity to be 'American.'" I'm wondering: How does she tell this story, this complicated duality? Is it tied to her own?

Later after the reading, during the Q & A, Yanique says "my narrator is multiple. I have three other narrators, first-person narrators. The same event is seen in different ways: They actually see other things that another person doesn't see." She believes her book frames "What it means to be American – and to tell your story. To tell your narrative." These multiple narrators help us recognize, she says, "Virgin Islanders are African-American. There are more versions: Northern, Southern. There is a multiplicity of versions of understanding the African-American experience."

What's The 411TV Book Editor, Luvon Roberson (left) chatting with Tiphanie Yanique, author of LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, prior to her talk at NYU's Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House.

My Favorite Author Quips & Snippets

Here's a quick pick of my favorite comments made by Tiphanie Yanique at her book reading at New York University, on September 12, 2014.

"Magic is real."

"A parent's first magic is naming."

"I feel like a responsible human being. I do think of politics, race, social justice. Politics, race, gender, and the natural environment. I think of them as craft structures. I feel free by those forms. I know that I'm participating in that form."

"I have two kids now. If my daughter is sleeping, I try to write. It might be five minutes, it may be 10 minutes, and I'm grateful."

BIO: Tiphanie Yanique

Tiphanie Yanique lives in Brooklyn and she is the author of the novel LAND OF LOVE AND DROWNING, (Riverhead/Penguin 2014), and the short story collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, published by Graywolf Press, 2010.

BookPage listed her as one of the 14 Women to Watch Out For in 2014. Her writing has won the 2011 BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Fiction, Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an Academy of American Poet's Prize. Yanique has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of the 16 cultural figures to watch out for and by the National Book Foundation as one of the 5 Under 35. Her writing has been published in Best African American Fiction, The Wall Street Journal, American Short Fiction among others.

Tiphanie Yanique is Assistant Professor of Writing at The New School. For additional information about author Tiphanie Yanique, visit www.tiphanieyanique.com.