LOS ANGELES -- Tracie D. Hall has spent most of her professional life working in service to others: as a curator, a librarian, an advocate for digital literacy and equitable access — and currently as the executive director of the American Library Association.
It made her a natural choice for the Literarian Award, bestowed annually by the National Book Foundation, which announced Hall as its 2022 honoree Wednesday morning, for "outstanding service to the American literary community." But when she found out about it several months ago, Hall couldn't quite believe it. Her first thoughts ran to the family that raised her in Watts.
"My grandparents both struggled with low literacy, and because of that they were avid that I would be a reader and a lover of books and ideas," said Hall, 53, from her home in Chicago. Along with her mother, they spent a lot of time and energy nurturing Hall as a reader, writer and poet.
