Lou Bellamy — founder of Penumbra Theatre, actor, director, professor, champion of African-American literature — is the winner of this year's Kay Sexton Award.
The award is presented annually to a person or institution who has made a lifelong, significant contribution to fostering books, reading and other literary activity in Minnesota.
In 1976, Bellamy founded Penumbra, which has grown to be the largest African-American theater in the country. It has produced 39 world premieres, including some of the plays of August Wilson. Bellamy and Wilson had a longtime professional relationship, and Penumbra has staged more of Wilson's plays than any other theater in the world.
In 2006, Bellamy entrusted the theater's archives to the Givens Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota. In 2011 the Lou Bellamy Rare Book Collection was established as part of the Givens Collection. The collection includes more than 850 rare volumes, some of which predate the Emancipation Proclamation.
Bellamy, an Obie Award-winning director, taught in the theater department at the U for 38 years.
He will be honored on April 8 at the 29th annual Minnesota Book Awards ceremony in the InterContinental Hotel in downtown St. Paul.
Previous winners of the Kay Sexton Award, named for a longtime Twin Cities bookseller, include Coffee House Press founder Allan Kornblum; St. Paul poet laureate Carol Connolly, and writer, teacher and mentor Carolyn Holbrook.
Laurie Hertzel • 612-673-7302 @StribBooks
