Please join us in congratulating all the winners of the 62nd Georgia Author of the Year Awards!
Biography
I Am a Georgia Girl: The Life of Lucille Selig Frank
by Ann Hite
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“A great biography reveals the full humanity of its subject, particularly the struggles. And with Lucile Selig Frank Ann Hite has taken on a mountain of struggle. Hite explores the case of Leo Frank case, and his subsequent lynching, through his wife’s point of view, beginning the heartbreaking tale with elegiac poetry that feels right for a Greek chorus. Then she takes us on a turbulent journey through prejudice, lethal mob violence, and the silencing of women. But Hite gives Lucille a voice. Combining meticulous research with a novelist’s knack for compassionate storytelling, Hite gives portrays a widow’s lifelong fight to clear her husband’s name while examining themes of antisemitism, injustice, and public hysteria in Georgia society.”
—Jerry Grillo
Children’s Book
When Alexander Graced the Table
by Denene Millner and Alexander Smalls,
illustrated by Frank Morrison
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“In both plot and telling, When Alexander Graced the Table by Denene Millner and Alexander Smalls is quite the sumptuous story. At first, the reader might believe this to be a visual and literary collage celebrating the cultural significance of Sunday dinner in Black America. How delightful, then, when this poetic homage shape-shifts into a tale of a young boy who wants to impress his father--in this instance, his father's sweet tooth--by making him a lemon icebox pie. The stakes are raised, thanks to Dad's not-so-easily-impressed palate and this being Alexander's first try at pie. That Alexander Graced the Table is based on a true story of co-author Smalls' childhood experience makes this story about how a chef is born all the more delicious. Well done.”
—Karen Good Marable
Detective/Mystery
Revenge
by Danielle Singleton
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“The book opens with a bloody body discovered in the snow on a Wyoming ranch with little more than a cryptic note of a Shakespearean passage as evidence. Ms. Singleton brings all the right elements for a gripping mystery. A wealthy family with secrets to hide, a local sheriff dealing with the biggest case of his career and a New York City reporter hungry for a salacious story. This immersive mystery takes the reader from the frigid, snowy plains of Wyoming to the harsh desert temperatures of Afghanistan, all in search of a killer. Ms. Singleton's cinematic writing was enthralling and the story unfolds with great pacing, believable characters and a plot that grabs the reader from the very first page. Brava!”
—Wanda Morris
First Novel
Ibis
by Justin Haynes
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“This brave and expansive novel begins in Trinidad, soaring backward and forward in time, and across borders, to tell the painful story of human exploitation in the Caribbean. We witness an enslaved woman’s plight as she attempts to flee sexual abuse by the British master of a sugar plantation. Just as she and her children bear the brunt of male cruelty, so do a migrant Venezuelan mother and daughter in a parallel modern-day story. The author travels boldly through the underworld of Black and brown sex traffickers who separate mother from child, bestowing on each wounds that will never heal. With a visionary’s magic, Haynes illuminates the ghosts, dreams, and hallucinations the most vulnerable conjure to save themselves, the fruits of imagination their only relief from unbearable suffering.”
—Parul Kapur
History
Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation
by Bennett Parten
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“Bennett Parten's Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation is an historical exercise deserving of the Georgia Author of the Year award in the History category. Many Georgians (especially those of a certain age) grew up with Sherman cast as a wanton firebug responsible for a level of irreverent destruction that enraged generations of historic preservationists. In this work, Parten presents a cogent analysis of the thousands of enslaved people who ran to the army, followed the army, and in due course turned the March through Georgia into a march of liberation. The book's central argument is best captured in Parten's own words: ‘Traditionally, we've only ever seen the March as a military campaign. What we've missed is that Sherman's army cut a path through the state of Georgia wide enough for freed people to begin putting the pieces of freedom together.’ To place the campaign into this context is, Parten argues, to finally understand the March for what it was — one of the most active, concentrated, and robust reimaginings of freedom in American history.”
—Jessica Lindberg
Horror
The October Film Haunt
by Michael Wehunt
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"Micheal Wehunt’s love letter to found footage horror, The October Film Haunt, examines the power of media new and old to bring our worst fears to life. A network of lone wolf occultists spreads terror and collects footage for a new film. A mysterious director plots chilling real-life murders and kidnappings. A demon breaks through the edge of reality. And a former horror maven fights to save herself and her son. Wehunt deploys his deep knowledge of the genre to enlist readers in the summoning of the Pine Arch Creature, and The October Film Haunt threatens to release that demon from the page into our digital lives.”
—Kurt Milberger
Inspirational
Lessons in Hope: A New Era for Maasi Women in Tanzania
by Juliet Cutler
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“This book felt deeply intentional. You can feel the author’s genuine passion and care for the girls whose stories are being told. One of the strongest aspects of the book is the collaboration with the girls themselves, allowing their voices and experiences to feel personal, honest, and fully seen. I was especially moved by the book’s reverence for women’s rights across cultures and the way it highlights the lasting impact of education and opportunity. The inclusion of former students who are now professionals in education, healthcare, government, and nonprofit work created a powerful full-circle narrative about giving back and uplifting others. The storytelling is immersive. I felt present with each person as the author shared their journeys. The book carries the visual elegance of a coffee table book, but its significance runs much deeper. Knowing that all proceeds support the foundation further reinforces the heart, purpose, and integrity behind this meaningful work. I sincerely enjoyed reading this book.”
—Alisha Bridges
Literary Fiction
Will There Ever Be Another You
by Patricia Lockwood
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“Will There Ever Be Another You defies conventions, roaming geographically and psychologically. It is a weird and incisive fever dream of a novel about illness, obsession, metalworking, fairies, a cat that changes colors after eating a skink, a husband with an incurable hole in his belly, a messed-up family, all filtered through the consciousness of a smart, unstable, and perceptive narrator.”
—Alan Grostephan
Memoir
Momma May Be Mad
by Kerry Neville
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“There is much to admire about the stunning writing in Kerry Neville’s memoir, Momma May Be Mad. The book opens with Neville’s admission that her memory is impaired by prior treatment with electric shock therapy, thus introducing the inventive collage structure that mirrors the fragmented nature of her memories. She addresses us directly as Dear Reader, an intimate invitation into her mind as she pieces this story together. Early on, she writes:
‘Call me Ishmael
Call me ElectroGirl
Call me Unreliable Narrator
Let me begin at one of my ends which is also my beginning again.
This part of the story?’
Neville writes with striking candor about her experiences with bipolar disorder, anorexia, self-harm, and alcoholism. Andre Dubus lll says, ‘The best writing comes not when you want to say something, but when you want to find something.’ Neville’s fierce self-interrogation brings readers alongside her on this mission. She writes about moments of clandestine drinking, purging, and cutting while her children were nearby. For ten years, the clutches of her illnesses were insurmountable, despite the love of her family.
Finally, when told by a psychiatrist she was a ‘hopeless case,’ Neville decided to prove him wrong and writes, ‘Dear Reader, bookmark! Here now is the turning point.’
Neville’s memories are anchored as ‘pushpins’ from the decade when she was passionately determined to die by suicide. She supplements these flashes with source material: photos, journal entries, medical records, and interviews with friends. She invites readers to question both the reliability of memory and the continuity of self over time. By the end of the book, she feels like a different person than the one who experienced the earlier agonies: She writes, ‘that ‘I’ stands in strange, estranged proximity…My unruly IIIIIIIIII’s arrive at different times and speeds to these pages…The self becomes erratic and unstable: no I, just iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…’
Despite the dark subject matter, the book surprises and delights with Neville’s lyrical prose and insatiable curiosity. A professor with a Ph.D. in creative writing, former Fulbright scholar, and a poet, she seamlessly integrates references to literature, philosophy, and science. For example, she references the history of wireless communication within the context of texting her children whom she left in Pennsylvania for a university teaching position in Georgia. This gut-wrenching move was essential to her healing. And her deft writing shifts—from the personal to the universal—allow us to breathe.
Momma May Be Mad provides insight into the complexities of mental health and the resilience possible with appropriate medical care, support of loved ones, and determination. This memoir is both a literary wonder and an invitation of hope to those impacted by mental illness and the people who love them.”
—Mimi Zieman
Poetry Collection
All Things in Common: Poems from the Farm
by Rupert Fike
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“A deep human soul fosters and inhabits these poems, which are utterly warm, utterly alive, sometimes humorous, and sometimes sobering. Collectively they tell the story of The Farm, a 1970s commune in Tennessee; individually they interrupt silence to relive and recast utopian aims in the face of wind and sun and mud.
At a time when the American Dream seems to be not shape-shifting but actually falling apart and away, All Things in Common is a timely assessment of one alt-version of it: a bringing-together of like spirits who succumb to human foibles and desires—like the young ‘man child’ in “Pumping the Outhouse” who’s taught to maneuver ‘the big hose;’ who then ‘begins to reflect’ on the not-so-mature move of driving himself, like a furious comet, to join the community of The Farm after an argument with his girlfriend:
He drifts off, distracted same as you
by goldfinches skittering, kicking up leaves,
males chartreuse as tennis balls,
a tribe of escaped parakeets
so delicate they seem shallow,
incapable of knowing what to do
with this spring, this sudden plumage.
There’s an echo in this collection of Frost’s project in North of Boston: voices off the land, moved out of hardship into measured speech…heard, then lifted into soft, steady song one should absolutely make time to hear.”
—Laura Newbern
Romance
Once Upon a Time in Dollywood
by Ashley Jordan
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“In Once Upon a Time in Dollywood Ashley Jordan crafts a gorgeous story of finding love while dealing with heartache. Jordan immerses readers in the lush setting of the Tennessee mountains, where her characters Evie and Jamie cautiously learn to trust one another despite the pain in their pasts. But the connection they create in the comforting isolation of their remote cabins can never truly be complete until they re-enter their complicated lives. My heart broke and mended as I read how Evie and Jamie grappled with building a strong, lasting love even as the wounds from their pasts threatened to tear them apart. I was swept up in this romance, experiencing the highs and lows of a new, fragile relationship that left me with a euphoric sensation on the final page when our protagonists finally achieve a hard-earned happily ever after. Jordan’s writing is captivating and deserve the highest praise.”
—Lauren Connolly
Science Fiction/Fantasy
North
by Ann Michelle Harris
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“In North, Ann Michelle Harris fulfills an exceptional premise: crafting a version of a north (and south) in a rich but brutal fantasy backdrop distinct enough to slip our own geography from the readers’ mind, but with familiar tribulations, like the way a culture may neglect their vulnerable realities for the fiction of polite rules on paper. A tight plot builds to a watershed moment of individual closure and bureaucratic ramifications on a varied cast of complex secondary characters. Harris demonstrates undeniable skill in finding pacing and beats as the curator of all the tiny moving parts of a beautifully complex fairytale must do in a novel that is delightfully cathartic.”
—T.M. May
Specialty
35 Natural Wonders of Georgia to See Before You Die
by Ann Litrel and Charles Seabrook
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“Both newcomers and long-time residents alike will find much of interest in 35 Natural Wonders of Georgia to See Before You Die. This engaging personal journey, a collaboration between Woodstock-based artist Ann Litrel and long-time Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Charles Seabrook, takes us on a guided tour through the state’s forests and mountains, marshlands and badlands, coves, dunes, falls, swamps, and springs. Not only is the text filled with historical facts and other interesting information, it also contains insights about the land and its people while shedding light on the colorful personalities that have shaped Georgia’s richly varied landscape, development, and preservation efforts. Peppered throughout are a sprinkling of anecdotes that will make readers feel like traveling companions kayaking with the authors through treacherous waters on Georgia’s Little Amazon, witnessing the blooming of endangered white spider lilies on the Flint River, or hiking through a labyrinth of boulders in the aptly named Rocktown. Helping us see these natural beauties are Litrel’s sketches and paintings, which are not merely complementary but integral to the text, providing little moments frozen in time for us to savor.”
—Albert Lee
Young Adult
Needy Little Things
by Channelle Desamours
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"Desamours has crafted an immersive and heartfelt narrative that immediately ensnared me on several levels, the most profound being the activation of so many fond memories of mine. The charming southern set pieces, authentic and outstanding characters, and engaging plot all come together in a flurry of nostalgic delight that not only transported me back to my childhood growing up in rural Georgia, but that also harkens back to similar titles that have permanently imprinted on my mind and heart, such as The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris and We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds. I’m incredibly proud of Desamours’ artistry, which is on full unabashed display in this compelling and noteworthy young adult novel, and I’m already anxiously awaiting her next work of art. As the great Octavia Butler once said, ‘Write on!'”
—Terry J. Benton-Walker