The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance has announced their 2014 Book Award Winners. Two North Carolina residents and a North Carolina-based press are among those honored.
Cathy Smith Bowers, of Charlotte, won the Poetry category for The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers (Press 53). Bowers was North Carolina’s sixth Poet Laureate, 2010-2012. Press 53 is based in Winston-Salem.
Chapel Hill’s Sarah Dessen won the Young Adult category for The Moon and More. She is the author of eleven novels, and a motion picture based on her first two books, titled How to Deal, was released in 2003.
The 2014 SIBA Book Award winners are:
• Children’s Winner: The Girl from Felony Bay by J.E. Thompson (Walden Pond Press)
• Cooking Winner: Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey: Recipes from My Three Favorite Food Groups and Then Some by John Currence (Andrews McMeel)
• Fiction Winner: Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall (Gallery Books)
• Nonfiction Winner: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink (Crown)
• Poetry Winner: The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers by Cathy Smith Bowers (Press 53)
• Young Adult Winner: The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (Viking Juvenile)
So, what’s SIBA’s 2014 Book Award all about?
Each year, hundreds of booksellers across the South vote on their favorite “handsell” books of the year. These are the “southern” books they have most enjoyed selling to customers; the ones that they couldn’t stop talking about. The SIBA Book Award was created to recognize great books of southern origin.
For more information about SIBA and the winning books, click here.