I am extremely pleased to announce that No Going Back is a finalist in the Best General Fiction category for the Whitney Awards, an awards program for novels by LDS authors.
Whitney Awards are determined through a three-part process.
- Initial nominations are made by readers who are not connected financially to the book. Any novel written by an LDS author during a given year that receives at least 5 reader nominations makes it onto the preliminary ballot.
- From the nominated works for each category, a committee mostly composed of writers and reviewers identifies a list of 5 finalists for that category. That’s the stage No Going Back has reached.
- Finalists in each category are voted on by an academy of industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others. A rule has been added that in order to vote in a category, you have to read all the finalists for that category.
Winners will be announced on April 24.
Looking at the other books that are up in my category (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford; Gravity vs. The Girl, by Riley Noehren; The Route, by Gale Sears; and Eyes Like Mine, by Julie Wright), I think it’s highly unlikely that I’ll actually win the award. But any publicity is good publicity, and as they always say, it’s an honor just to be considered. (And yes, I mean this sincerely.)
Possibly the best thing from my perspective is that anyone who wants to vote in this category will need to read my book, at least if they want to follow the rules. I believe my publisher will be making PDF copies available for free to all the members of the academy. I’ve been saying all along that my biggest problem is that people can only find out about my book through word of mouth. This is a pretty great way of getting more exposure!
Tags: Jonathan Langford, literature, Mormon, No Going Back, Whitney awards
Cool! Congratulations!
I just checked out the Whitney Awards site, to find that announcements wew 4 days ago.
Well…..