C. Vargas McPherson Wins the $5,000 Grand Prize in Our Seventh Annual North Street Book Prize Competition for Self-Published Books
Winning Writers is pleased to announce the results from its seventh annual North Street Book Prize competition. C. Vargas McPherson of Portland, Oregon won the Grand Prize and $5,000 for her memoir Inheriting Our Names: An Imagined True Memoir of Spain's Pact of Forgetting. These category winners received $1,000 each:
- Nicole Kohr of New Bern, North Carolina won First Prize in Children's Picture Book for My Pants, a funny and heartwarming story about an autistic little girl with a special interest in fashion.
- Ryan Poirier of Bowmanville, Ontario won First Prize in Graphic Novel & Memoir for The Herd, a superhero spoof set in a city of humanoid animals where a mishap at the fruit juice factory has given our not-too-bright protagonists some special powers.
- Jan Regan of Geneva, New York won First Prize in Art Book for #porchportraits, a sensitive photo essay about families in her hometown during the first months of COVID lockdown and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
- Leslie Sussan of Silver Spring, Maryland won First Prize in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir for Choosing Life: My Father's Journey in Film from Hollywood to Hiroshima. Sussan's memoir chronicles the late Herbert Sussan's life-altering experiences as a Defense Department cinematographer filming the aftermath of the atomic bomb, and his daughter's pilgrimage to Hiroshima in 1987-88 to complete the exposé he was never allowed to share.
- Delores Lowe Friedman of Bayside, New York and Ian Strasfogel of New York, New York each received a First Prize in Mainstream/Literary Fiction. Friedman's multi-layered, intimate novel Wildflowers follows a decades-long friendship among three Black women in New York City. Strasfogel's novel Operaland is a comical romp about a middle-aged Midwestern car salesman who becomes a world-class Wagnerian tenor.
- Tim Stickel of Mercer Island, Washington won First Prize in Genre Fiction for Special District: Harbin, a historical mystery that follows a young half-Korean, half-Russian policeman in 1929 China as he investigates his first major homicide case.
- Thomas Sheehan of Saugus, Massachusetts won First Prize in Poetry for The Saugus Book, a mature collection of narrative poetry about the Korean War and working-class life in the Northeast.
In addition to cash prizes, the top nine authors received a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $300 credit at BookBaby, and free advertising in the Winning Writers newsletter. $14,750 was awarded in all. We received over 2,000 entries from around the world. Jendi Reiter and Ellen LaFleche judged, assisted by Annie Mydla, Sarah Halper, and Lauren Singer. Read the complete release. Read about the winning entries.
Published: February 15, 2022
