Frontlist | PenCraft Book Awards announces top three winners

Frontlist | PenCraft Book Awards announces top three winners
on Oct 24, 2020

The 2020 PenCraft Awards for literary excellence recognizes 46 remarkable literary works in numerous categories for this year's competition. Each year the PenCraft Awards organization honors the top three authors with cash prizes to acknowledge their accomplishments. Tim Westover's The Winter Sisters, published by QW Publishers, was voted Best Book of the Year. No More Dodging Bullets: A Memoir about Faith, Love, Lessons, and Growth by Amy Herrig and published by Inspired Forever Books won the best nonfiction book for 2020. The book voted as the 2020 Best Fiction of the Year was Krishna Rose's Woman in Red - Magdalene Speaks published by Black Rose Writing. Tim Westover's work of fiction, The Winter Sisters, is a story of folklore, medicine, and superstition in the 19th century Georgia mountains, where a stuffy doctor and three supposed witches must come together to fight the plague that's threatening their town. Westover demonstrated the good in humans by his unselfish act of donating all his proceeds from the sales of The Winter Sisters through 12/31/2019 to the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta – Child Life Division, raising over $49,000, through the generosity of his readers. Westover stated, The success truly humbles me that readers granted to my little independent book about a small Georgia town in the 19th century, even though there's no genre shelf at the bookstore for it, and for taking a chance on a writer they've never heard of. Westover states that he gathered all the material for his novel from the exploration of the world around him. He said, I don't makeup anything that I write. Generations before me have already found the best stories. I collect what I can from old folks, young folks, museums, signs, pamphlets, and old newspaper articles. And I tie them up with a little narrative to save as many of the old stories as I can. His formula worked with, The Winter Sisters, and we hope that it works again in his next novel. The Winter Sisters is the winner of the US Selfies 2019 (from Publishers Weekly and Booklife), Foreword Reviews INDIES 2019 Gold Winner for Fantasy, 2019 Authors Circle Fiction Book of the Year, IPPY's Bronze Medal for Best Southeast Regional Fiction 2019, Chanticleer OZMA Fantasy 2019: First Place in Category, and the PenCraft 2020 Best Book of the Year. Krishna Rose is our 2020 Best Fiction of the year winner with her novel,Woman in Red - Magdalene Speaks. It is a well-researched and believable work of fiction that will challenge believers and atheists with an equally rich interpretive of gospel, history, and culture of two thousand years ago. Wonderfully fresh and readable - it reads with considerable intellectual force about one of the most influential symbols in the history of Christianity. Krishna Rose lives on a small farm surrounded by countryside, she fills her days writing, sprinkling hope into our collective consciousness. She spent 25 years faithfully studying obscure texts and visiting historical sites in order to unearth important pieces of untold history and spirituality. She said, In this way, I was able to offer an authentic portrayal, recounting secret details of what happened next, after the crucifixion. I set my heart on unraveling the naked-truth of history's most legendary and influential personalities and soon became aware of a highly protected alternate story. Her research gave birth to her riveting novel, Woman in Red - Magdalene Speaks. Krishna Rose also recently released her third studio album, Woman in Red, with award-winning music producer Craig Pruess. Her next book, The Secrets in the Mirror, is planned for a 2021 release alongside a Woman in Red Self-Help Oracle Deck. The winner of the PenCraft Awards' 2020 Best Nonfiction of the Year was Amy Herrig's No More Dodging the Bullets. Her memoir is an in-depth airing of the author's chaotic life and her self-discovery. Amy gives you a glimpse of her childhood years with her atypical family, who were neither dysfunctional and destitute nor upper class wealthy. Amy states, It takes vulnerability, and therefore courage, to share a personal story with the world, but I felt compelled to do so. Her candid memoir, she hopes, will educate people about our Federal Justice system and, at the same time, give people hope and inspiration. Amy said, I made it through some very challenging times with the love, support, and encouragement of many people (intimate friends and strangers), so if my story can be something positive and uplifting for someone, then I am grateful for the opportunity to help. She also stated that I had no idea the world would be going through the craziness of COVID-19 when my memoir was published, but I think now more than ever we can use a reminder that difficult times will pass and we can overcome uncertainty and life's hurdles. Amy desires to connect with as many people as possible because she feels that's how we symbiotically learn and grow. She said, We are each other's greatest teachers and source of information, and I plan to keep writing, sharing, learning, and growing Tim Westover, Krishna Rose, and Amy Herrig are our three headliners, but this year we will also be honoring 43 other great writers who have won not only a PenCraft Award but also honors from other literary competitions. Another press release will soon be issued listing their names and books. In a year of tremendous sacrifice, both health-wise and financially for so many, we're proud to be able to offer money to our top winning authors, and not just words to honor their accomplishments. But in this year of chaos, even tendering the prize money to the authors was disrupted by one small publishing company that demanded their author's winnings be paid to them instead. However, the PenCraft Awards only makes payments to the winning authors, and that is the policy we will continue to abide by. The PenCraft Award competition is an annual literary contest that strives to give all authors an equal opportunity in promoting their works to the reading public. Our goal is to make our competition inspiring, fun, and open to all authors. The PenCraft Awards receives hundreds of nominated books, but only a small percentage win. Our winners are the best. We hope that we can continue being a conduit to introducing new authors and fantastic new books to the reading public. The 4th Annual PenCraft Award ceremony will be held as a virtual event this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. A date for the event has not yet been set. For further information, please contact the event coordinator, David Hearne, 409-656-4625.