my journey through life is better because of you, walter mosley.ate you so much. [ applause ] let me thank the national book foundation and its board for this year's celebration and for the work you do every day to make this world livable for the entire literary community. i thank you for that work and for your acknowledgement of me. neil baldwin, former director of the national book foundation, brenda green from national black writers conference, troy johnson of aalbc and publishers group west, our distributor. thank you guys for being here, lending me your support. black classic press is part of a group of o-line black line publishers that includes third world press, africa world press and just us books. these legacy publishers are survivors from the civil rights and human rights battles of the '60s and '70s along with universal write press. we work every day to maintain and expand black self-narrating voices. we each have different focus. my focus is resistive black voices that assert and confirm the right of black people to advocate and express

it gives me great pleasure to welcome to the stage walter mosley. i didn't know there was going to be a music. they have it on this thing, but i'm going to read my paper. it says almost exactly the thing, you know, because, you know, i just get the feeling that you get the feeling like when when you come and they say they want to see it so they can, but they just because they can put it up here, so they can read it, that they really want to make sure what you're saying isn't to embarrass anybody. anyway, i recently had occasion to call paul coates, a warrior publisher, the black man who traded the term slave for enslaved the black panther, who was on many a hit list. the man that brought literature into prisons. literature that most people didn't and still don't know exists. paul koch, who virtually bled his own blood to ink his printing presses and who worked shoulder to shoulder with world shattering writers, editors, his own family, and those of us of the diaspora around the world. paul coates, who is still the only black publisher in america tha