2025 Judges’ Statements
Biography
Judge: Mark Beaver
Winner: Genius of Sport -- Pierre de Coubertin, Paris, and the Birth of the Olympic Movement -- A Brief Biography of a Forgotten Hero by George Hirthler
The architect of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was a man of contrasts: an aristocrat who turned his back on monarchy and championed common people; a diminutive man, five-feet, three-inches tall, who brought the world together to celebrate physical prowess and athletic supremacy; a man born into wealth who died penniless; a man who changed the course of sports history but whose name today is virtually forgotten. In Genius of Sport, George Hirthler seeks to explore these contrasts and, in doing so, centralize a figure who has been banished to the footnotes of history. Coubertin resurrected the Olympic games after centuries of dormancy; in these pages, Hirthler resurrects Coubertin himself. Coubertin’s work went far beyond athletic competition, reaching into education, politics, and the arts, all of which he used to help define and express the Olympic ideal. Thanks to George Hirthler’s splendid little book, the philosophy of Olympism becomes an inspiration to us all.
Finalist: Vagabond Princess by Ruby Lal
Afghanistan and India are far away and the sixteenth-century was long ago, but Ruby Lal’s expertly-researched biography of Gulbadan transports readers to another place and time. With evocative details and a fast-paced plot, Lal guides us from Gulbadan’s childhood as a Mughal princess, to her young adulthood as a bold adventurer, to her pilgrimage to Mecca with other women of her harem, and finally to her old age when she became a memoirist and, as such, the only woman historian of the Empire. Along the way, readers get deeply acquainted with a remarkable figure who until now has been relegated to the shadows of historical scholarship. In Ruby Lal’s capable hands, Gulbadan is at last brought center stage and fully introduced to the world.
Children’s Book
Judge: Theresa Tha Songbird
Winner: Yaya and the Sea by Karen Good Marable, Illustrated by Tonya Engel
Yaya and the Sea is a colorful and alluring journey of family and culture. It entices the reader with beautiful illustrations as well as an illuminating storyline that exudes warmth and a feeling of love. This story provides a passport for young readers, and access to a world of new experiences.
Finalist: When a Monster Meditates by Catherine Gayle, Illustrated by Joan Coleman
When a Monster Meditates is a beautiful offering of peaceful space to children in a way that is easily and enjoyably consumed. Every little monster deserves room to breathe, and within each page young readers can create room for self reflection and a calm mind.
Detective/Mystery
Judge: Snowden Wright
Winner: What You Leave Behind by Wanda Morris
Literature depends on real estate. From as far back as Jane Austen, novels have revolved around property and titles, who owns what, how land and the things we build on it engender financial, social, and familial security and pride—a home of one’s own. In her novel, What You Leave Behind, Wanda Morris couples the subject of real estate with a classic trope of the mystery genre—theft—to explore the porous line between ancestry and legacy, the retrospective and the prospective. To face the future we have to study the past, and this novel, compelling as it is relevant, delves into illegal land grabs made possible by a racist conspiracy dating back to the Civil War. The heart of the book is the very nature of home. Here is a novel with the courage to stand by the sweep of its story, the dignity of its convictions, and the grace of its characters.
Finalist: Nothing But the Bones by Brian Panowich
In his poem “September 1, 1939,” W.H. Auden writes, “I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.” Brian Panowitch’s Nothing But the Bones illustrates and, ultimately, negates that unfortunate axiom. A propulsive picaresque with social themes reminiscent of S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, the novel explores generational violence and cyclical bigotry by hitching them to a muscle car on a midnight run from Georgia to Florida. The passengers on that run? A pair of lost souls who, like so many of us, find hope through each other. They’re oxbow lakes, cut off from the river. This book digs a channel back.
First Novel
Judge: Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Winner: Inside the Mirror by Parul Kapur
Parul Kapur's richly descriptive prose immerses the reader in India's post-Colonial years, a compelling time of change during which twin sisters Jaya and Kamlesh struggle to meet the obligations set upon them by family and society and, at the same time, honor and remain true to their own hearts' yearnings. Kapur draws characters so vividly that I felt what they felt, saw what they saw, struggled and triumphed with them. The joy and hope and heartbreak and deeply felt desires of the sisters remains with me, and will for a long time.
Finalist: Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
I loved this reimagining of the Persephone myth, setting it in 15th century West Africa. It is filled with twists and turns and a gratifying personal journey for our heroine who discovers a strength within herself as she struggles to survive, thrive, and claim the power that we all know is in her. The ending is oh-so satisfying.
History
Judge: Elizabeth Giddens
Winner: A Debt of Gratitude: How Jimmy Carter Put Vietnam Veterans’ Issues on the National Agenda by Glenn Robins
This work meticulously traces the policies, initiatives, and rhetoric Jimmy Carter employed first as Governor of Georgia and subsequently as the 39th President of the United States in regard to the generation of young people who were called to serve their country during the Vietnam War—including veterans, draft resisters, and deserters. Robins shows that well before the war’s end Carter grasped veterans’ need for recognition, healthcare, employment assistance, educational support, and honor for their service to a cause that divided society and tarnished the nation’s image. Carter attempted to move the country forward after the war with healing policies such as amnesty for resisters and to separate the Americans’ feelings about the war from their treatment of its veterans. Carter compassionately asked the nation not to confuse “the warrior with the war.” Robins’ deep archival research shows how challenging this agenda was in a fraught political age. During the 1970s, the US struggled through economic stagflation, a cold war with the Soviet Union, the Iran hostage crisis, social discord surrounding the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as veterans’ difficult reintegration into society. Robins reveals that Carter was often attacked from all sides—activists, party allies, and opponents alike—for what he believed were well reasoned decisions. This work tells a fresh story about complex times and a leader under challenge. It offers insights into multiple levels of historical significance: Jimmy Carter as a veteran himself who was sensitive to veterans’ needs, Carter as a career politician, the gradual emergence of veterans’ activism throughout the 1970s, and the capricious outcomes of political gamesmanship.
Finalist: James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia: A Founder’s Journey from Slave Trader to Abolitionist by Michael L. Thurmond
This work presents a compelling reassessment of Oglethorpe’s legacy as the founder of the Georgia colony. Though Georgia was the one colony to prohibit slavery under Oglethorpe’s conception and supervision, his reputation has long been sullied by his affiliation with a British slave trading company, use of slave labor to establish Savannah, and a smear campaign by pro-slavery colonists intended to pressure the leader to end the slavery prohibition. Thurmond reveals that these facts must be fully contextualized before readers can grasp the moral Christian philosophy that guided Oglethorpe's choices, much less guess at his motivations. The author provides compelling details about the founder’s lifelong resistance to slavery for economic, colonial-defense, and humanitarian reasons, and he chronicles multiple occasions when Oglethorpe recognized the shared humanity of other peoples, including the native Yamacraw, Jewish immigrants, and Africans. Oglethorpe assisted these groups and fostered white colonists’ and Britons’ understanding of them. The particular stories of two Africans, Ayuba Sulieman Diallo and Olaudah Equiano, describe how Oglethorpe befriended and assisted vulnerable men in a society corrupted by the transatlantic slave trade: he paid to free the former and advised the latter to help free a friend who had been re-enslaved in London. The work also traces Oglethorpe’s evolution from an antislavery stance to overt abolitionism during the last decades of his life, legitimately earning the description on his memorial: “Friend of the oppressed Negro.”
Inspirational
Judge: Albert Lee
Winner: Dig Deeper: A 21-Week Guide to Self-Discovery Through Plants by Alisha M. Bridges
With Dig Deeper, Alisha M. Bridges has written a practical guide on the care of the self that doubles as a useful handbook on plant cultivation. It is also an inspirational memoir that presents its subject with clear-eyed honesty reflecting years of hard-won insight. In sharing how she's been able to overcome the numerous challenges in her life, Bridges is never self-congratulatory or preachy; she simply offers personal details to provide context for the approaches she suggests, inviting the reader to engage in activities that seem to have worked for her. The result is a set of clear, simple, actionable tips for dealing with life's thorniest problems complemented by tastefully chosen photos and inviting icons in the form of helping hands, all of which is presented in a manner that speaks to the reader with the gentle wisdom of a patient gardener. This is an impressive achievement by a first-time author.
Finalist: The Playbook Gary E. Parker
With its storyline revolving around small-town high school football, an untested head coach fighting against prejudice, and a backup quarterback rising from adversity to take the reins of a championship contender, it would be tempting to characterize Gary E. Parker's The Playbook as an updated, fictional version of H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights or films such as Remember The Titans and Wildcats. But by setting this story in a contemporary rural Georgia grappling with its identity in a rapidly changing world and populated with complex characters who lead complicated lives--a female football player-turned-coach, a talented but troubled athlete, an ambitious rival coach--Parker creates compelling situations that drive his characters to make choices with real moral consequences. A former athlete and longtime Southern Baptist minister, Parker writes with authority about the world of big-time high-school athletics, from play-calling to branding to corruption, and a keen awareness of our divisive contemporary politics. As he does so, he inspires us to reflect on our own attitudes and actions in the face of moral challenges.
Literary Novel
Judge: Rahad Abir
Winner: The Banana Wars by Alan Grostephan
Vivid and grimly detailed, The Banana Wars is a tumultuous novel with a complex cast of characters. Alan Grostephan’s writing echoes the spirit of Garcia Márquez and the precision of Juan Rulfo; nonetheless, he has a distinctive voice that is unmistakably his own.
Finalist: Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard
A moving and meticulously imagined portrayal of Florence Nightingale’s life, Flight of the Wild Swan is a deeply researched novel, told in an inventive and compelling narrative dripping with poetic intensity.
Memoir
Judge: John Blake
Winner: Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman
It has everything a reader would want from a well-told story: a propulsive narrative; vivid characterizations of Zieman’s family and fellow climbers; rich, poetic language and a sympathetic narrator whose honesty is never in doubt. From the opening, when Zieman takes the readers to the treacherous terrain of Everest and describes the ominous sounds of ice cracking and an impending avalanche, I’m hooked. Some memoirs get bogged down in exposition—the narrator spends so much energy naval-gazing at their trauma or explaining too much. But Zieman never let the facts get in the way of putting the story first. She attacks her narrative like climbing Everest: she keeps the momentum rolling by focusing on the action and on the choices people make, which can make the difference between life and death. Those critical choices are not confined to the mountain, but also to the choices that her father and other family members made to survive the Holocaust. I was struck by how she deftly blended so many disparate elements in the story. She offered insightful meditations on the pressures that comes with being the daughter of Holocaust survivors; her faith, her struggles as a woman in this male-dominated world of alpha males climbing Everest. She also shows the expectations that come with being a woman doctor and describes the sheer logistical challenge of mounting and pulling off an Everest expedition. She conveyed a sense of peril and danger, which is hard to do in a memoir. I marveled at not only her resilience by the toughness of her father, who mastered so many languages and swam across a river to survive. And when one of the climbers near the end seemed lost at the end of the expedition, my heart sank. She made me invested in not only her, but her characters. Some favorite passages: Her description of traversing a glacier that was “gurling and creaking…as if it were daring us.” Her waking up in a guesthouse near Everest and watching the “street awaken with the sun, a yawn of outstretched orange.” Like the best memoirs, she comes away transformed by her inner and outer journey. “I realize that living and loving while knowing all could be lost is the essence of the greatest aliveness.” A final thought: I’m struck by Mimi’s humility. At no point in the book did I get the sense that she was boasting about her incredible accomplishments. But like her family, she is tough, disciplined, and driven. This story was a delight to read.
Finalist: The Innermost House by Cynthia Blakeley
This was an interesting story. The subject seemed two-fold: the life of Cynthia but also the elusiveness of memory itself. Blakely’s story of growing up as a “cast away from a shipwrecked family” had tremendous energy. She and the eccentric and rugged characters in her family jumped off the page. I loved her mom, whose “house felt more like a halfway house than a home.” I was struck by her mom for primarily two reasons: She never let the loss she experienced from men and poverty shrink her heart. She was always trying to help others. And she had this ability to keep reinventing and improving herself throughout her life. She was loud, flawed, at times not a good mom, but wow, she was always so alive. No matter what happened to her, I never doubted her mom’s heart. I liked her crusty Uncle Clyde, too, the salty working-class man who saw ghosts and had a beatific vision at the moment of his death. But most of all I liked Cynthia. Of course, all the writing chops are there. She uses beautiful, evocative language to create a sense of place in the Outer Cape. She made that rugged terrain come alive so much that at times I felt like I could feel the nip of cold breeze from the ocean and hear seagulls. But most of all I admired Cynthia’s resilience and largeness of spirit. I admired her survival instincts as a girl as she found a way to lose herself in writing and stories to create another path for herself. I admired her honesty—it takes guts to tell a story about losing your virginity to a priest. I admire her for including people in her book that challenged her memory, such as the relative who read an account of her father and said “This is not the man I remember; You’ve written about a stranger.” And I admire how she introduced supernatural elements to the story without letting those stories become the focus of her memoir. But the part of her story that put this book over the top to me is how she wrote about her childhood abuse. I’m a man, and I can’t relate to being a little girl. But when I read her account of the abuse, she made me feel the terror, the confusion and the sheer helplessness of being a little girl alone in a room with a monster. She somehow managed to convey the specific nature of the abuse, how it traumatized her mind and body, without being too graphic. Her confession that she went back again to the man because her family was so poor and needed the money was something few writers would have admitted. It’s staggeringly honest and it makes me trust and admire her more because she is being so candid. And then to discover near the end of the story that she still tried to see the humanity of the man who molested her made me admire her even more. Very few people are that magnanimous. The way she wrote about her abuse should be studied by aspiring writers. It was a masterclass in restraint, language and honesty. It was the most absorbing part not only of the book, but of any of the books I read. I think in any memoir you can have great writing and maybe even a great story but it’s also important to like and trust the narrator. Cynthia won me over not only with her storytelling skill but the innate kindness and honesty that she displayed throughout her life.
Poetry Chapbook
Judge: Julia Knowlton
Winner: Broken Grace at Low Tide by Sally Stewart Mohney
In these songs of loss, Mohney reaffirms the fiery power of poetic language, which is to transcend the quotidian word and world via metaphor and symbol. Avoiding ho-hum narrative, her piercing images unsettle the limits of memory and desire: forsythia "lifts a bright/yellow flag/beneath the ghost hemlock" and a "chalk-plumed" barn owl witnesses and "waits ... like a conjured clock."
Finalist: Ilze's Daughter by Livija (Riki) Bolster
Ilze’s Daughter is a quiet triumph. From war-torn Latvia to a displaced persons camp in Germany to the quiet drama of rural Pennsylvania, Bolster honors the suffering, humility, and dignity of her family’s immigrant experience. The depictions of her mother's ceaseless, daily household work honor the oft-forgotten domestic labor of all women.
Poetry Full-Length Book
Judge: Olatunde Osinaike
Winner: A Night in the Country by Laura Newbern
In its deep exploration of setting and silence, A Night in the Country imparts listening as the throughline by which we receive clarity and the sacred. This collection reverses the albeit familiar storyline of inheritance into one of challenge and comfort for the reader, taking us on a momentous journey through glimpses at denial, triumph, and our old eye on the new. While there are many pasts Newbern directs us toward, none are more satisfying than the realization we rely too heavily on our natures. It is a pleasure to be reminded, thanks to this wondrous collection, that we render from acknowledgement those mercies made less impossible than before.
Finalist: In Another Country by Andrea Jurjević
To orbit mourning without the very earth it depends on is but a tender and pivotal task navigated brilliantly by Jurjević in this collection. A remarkable assembly of poems on belonging and ecology, In Another Country signals the great temptation of departure as one that cheats a land out of its memory, and a narrative out of its lyric. Jurjević ushers us toward the strange and gorgeous with notable restraint, aware that, even in the aftermath of grief, reconciliation arrives in its own time. Unbothered by the fatigue of knowledge, this collection reveals in true measure the spark and rest that becomes of the sweetness left in a poetics still curious.
Romance
Judge: Tracy Solheim
Winner: PS: I Hate You by Lauren Connolly
Ms. Connolly has created a story with “all the feels” one would expect in a romance novel. She gives readers laughter, tears, a lot of sarcasm and, of course, passion. What sets this book apart from others in the genre, however, is its unique plot. This enemies-to-lovers romance doesn’t travel in a straight line. It meanders through eight states where the couple must spread the ashes of someone who played a huge part in both their lives—the heroine’s brother. One of the great things about this book is the love story isn’t rushed. Ms. Connolly allows both characters the time they need not only to fall in love, but to let their hearts heal from the loss of someone who meant a great deal to them. That process was at times humorous and messy, but always very well-written. While PS: I Hate You is a book about two people getting their happily ever after, it is also a love story between a sister and a brother who was her champion her entire life. Ms. Connolly gives readers a moving book about a woman discovering that, with the help of found family, she can survive after tragic loss. PS: I Hate You represents the romance genre at its very finest.
Finalist: The Dividing Sky by Jill Tew
Ms. Tew did a brilliant job with the world-building in this book. From the opening scene, the reader is drawn into a future society that is chillingly easy to relate to these days. The stakes are high for all the characters in this book and that keeps the reader turning pages. The author didn’t shy away from digging into messy emotions and virtues, either. Her characters struggle with right and wrong throughout the book without the prose being overly moralistic. At its core, Dividing Sky is a book about love. An enemies-to-lovers story of two-flawed characters who learn to love themselves and each other as they band together to survive in the complicated world they live in. The found family that Ms. Tew surrounds these two with enriches the novel. All in all, this is a beautiful read.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Judge: Kurt Milberger
Winner: Alan Dreams of Giants by T.M. May
Full of warm characters and thrilling adventures, T.M. May’s Alan Dreams of Giants offers a fresh and engaging take on the fantasy genre. Inspired by a love of reading and the tedium of working retail, this book explores the permeable boundaries between dream, fantasy, and real life in a quest with real heart. With verve and humor, May’s debut demonstrates the sustaining power of storytelling and announces the arrival of exciting new voice in the genre.
Finalist: The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons
Jenn Lyons’s The Sky on Fire takes place in a richly imagined world ruled by tyrannical dragons. Blending tropes of high fantasy, action, and the heist, Lyons’s novel imagines a queer-normative world where a party of misfits must outwit a dragon and make off with treasure from her horde. With riveting adventure and compelling characters, The Sky on Fire delivers wonder and thrills.
Short Story Collection
Judge: Denene Millner
Winner: Zan by Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh
Ehtesham-Zadeh’s storytelling is like the ocean: at times it is quiet, serene, at others, it crashes and roars. The words, they are the water—refreshing, necessary, powerful, inescapable—soaking into the crevices of the interior lives of Iranian women, floating into the readers’ view their beauty and vulnerability, yes, but also their strength, defiance and unwavering fight to be seen, heard, free, in a world intent on repressing and misunderstanding them. Ehtesham-Zadeh’s gift grips us from the very first page and never lets us go, not for a single second. Witness the opening paragraphs in the first story, titled, Zan, about a coordinated and dangerous protest by Iranian women who wear makeup and take down their hijab in public to show their disdain for modesty laws that not only deny women basic freedoms, but bring them immense harm and, in some cases, imprisonment and death. Ultimately, the story is about love and respect and freedom, and the wisdom it takes to snatch a bit of each for oneself in a society bent on oppressing women: “In your dream last night, a small figure was walking across a desert landscape, looking up at a vast star-laden sky. You saw the scene from above, like a high-angle shot in a film, but even from so far away you could tell that the figure was a woman. Suddenly, in that way dreams have of blurring lines, the desert morphed into your face and the tiny figure became you, walking across the landscape of your own skin. When you woke up this morning, it occurred to you that your face shares a topography with your country: a dry and rugged surface dotted with dark patches where the sun has punished it, furrows and ruts snaking up from all sides, brittle, windswept hair that looks like an orchard after desertification, eyes that have lost their luster like the bodies of water in your homeland that are becoming toxic and shrinking. Iran is etched into your skin.”
Zan, then, is an eye-opening education. A gorgeous meditation on identity and humanity, dressed up in layers of bold, lyrical, thought-provoking stories that made this reader reflect long after finishing the last page.
Finalist: The Women Who Would Not Die by Uddipana Goswami
What makes The Women Who Would Not Die a stand-out is Goswami’s unflinching
gut-punch of short stories that train on the love, hope, community, and resolve that rests in the underbelly of war and violence. Goswami’s storytelling is tactical and educational, but tender and revelatory. Witness this passage from This is How We Lived, a story about how community swallows its outrage over unspeakable violence against its women and children, not because they do not care about the ones harmed, but because they must focus on the survival of the whole: “We do not want to be killed, and so we make these excuses for them. For ourselves, we say nothing, just wash ourselves ten times, maybe a hundred, and try to forget it happened, till it happens a second time, or a third. But if it happens even once, we get used to it, and inured to the ignominy. We have started looking at it less as an affront to our dignity and more as a price we have to pay for living in comparative peace in the midst of a mini war. We did not start the war, somebody else did. Many people are paying for it with their lives; the least we can do is be thankful we are alive...”
Goswami’s writing is every bit as haunting as her storytelling, readers fortunate enough to pick up The Women Who Would Not Die won’t soon forget.
Specialty Book
Judge: Anna Sandy-Elrod
Winner: Small Altars by Justin Gardiner
Justin Gardiner's Small Altars is less a memoir than a memorial, a tender and unflinchingly honest tribute to the author's late brother that looks deeply into grief, resentment, distance, and how to see the ones we love. Throughout the book's non-chronological span, Gardiner uses memory, medical research, and the world of comic books and superheroes to navigate the complexities of his relationship with his brother, who struggled with mental illness in the decades leading up to his untimely death from cancer. Understated without being simple, poignant without being sentimental, Gardiner presents a heartbreakingly beautiful meditation on what it means to be a hero in one's own life, not in spite of tragedy but alongside it.
Finalist: The Fermentation Oracle by Julia Skinner
Julia Skinner's The Fermentation Oracle is part cookbook, part tarot deck, part meditation. Combining the process of fermentation with reflections on life and living, Skinner presents a one-of-a-kind experience that allows the reader to join her in the magic of making. Whether the reader pulls a single card or reads the book from cover-to-cover, they'll be guided into a practice of both nourishment and intention. With beautiful illustrations, clear recipes, and thoughtful writing, The Fermentation Oracle has something for everyone.
Young Adult
Judge: Aaron Levy
Winner: Blood Justice by Terry J. Benton Walker
Blood Justice, by Terry Benton Walker shines as an award worthy young adult novel through its electrifying blend of mythic magic, moral complexity, and cultural richness. Sequel to the acclaimed Blood Debts, it plunges readers into a vividly enchanted New Orleans where Afrodiasporic spiritual traditions interweave with issues like racism, intergenerational trauma, homophobia, and teenage mental health. The richly drawn three dimensional characters, highs takes magic, and emotionally resonant themes combine to make Blood Justice both thrilling and deeply meaningful, and perhaps most importantly for teens – a total page turner.
Finalist: Jasmine Is Haunted by Mark Oshiro
Jasmine Is Haunted, by Mark Oshiro excels as an ideally middle grade story with its heartfelt blend of spooky mystery, cultural authenticity, and emotional depth. It follows Mexican-American Jasmine Garza, haunted by her father’s ghost, as she grapples with grief, family secrets, and the power of community. Oshiro’s inclusive characters—including queer and nonbinary friends in a school Gay-Straight Alliance club (GSA)—are portrayed with warmth and wonderful realism, normalizing diverse identities without overshadowing the rich plot. Praise for Oshiro’s fast pace, poignant, emotionally resonant storytelling, and layered supernatural themes, creating a moving, culturally rich, and truly haunting tale.
