Winning Writers Announces the Winners of the 2nd Annual North Street Book Prize for Self-Published Books

By: Christina Mancuso Feb. 15, 2017

NORTHAMPTON, Mass., Feb. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ Winning Writers is pleased to announce the winners of its second annual North Street Book Prize for self-published books. 473 books were judged by Jendi Reiter and Ellen LaFleche, assisted by Lauren Singer and Annie Keithline.

Linda L.T. Baer of Charleston, SC won first prize in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir for Red Blood, Yellow Skin, a gripping memoir of survival as a child and young woman in war-torn Vietnam. Winfred Cook of Oakland, CA won first prize in Mainstream/Literary Fiction for Uncle Otto, an atmospheric and moving historical novel about an African-American family in the World War I and Prohibition era. L.S. Johnson of San Leandro, CA won first prize in Genre Fiction for Vacui Magia, a collection of lyrical dark fantasy/horror stories about women driven by oppression to invoke dangerous forces.

The top winners each received $1,500, a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $300 credit at BookBaby, and three free ads in the Winning Writers newsletter (a $450 value).

Mary Ellen Sanger of Fort Collins, CO won a special $500 second prize for Blackbirds in the Pomegranate Tree, an American woman's memoir of her unjust imprisonment in Mexico and her fellow inmates' life stories.

Honorable Mentions of $250 each were awarded to:

Jordan Cosmo for Mind Your Head, the coming-of-age memoir of a lesbian in a Christian missionary family
Mary C. Koral for The Year the Trees Didn't Die, the story of her adopted children from Vietnam, India, and South Korea and their struggles to cope with early trauma and racism
Jeffrey Ingber for Bla's Letters, a dramatization of his Hungarian parents' escape from the Holocaust
Lee Wicks for Some Measure of Happiness, an intimate tale of friendship and bereavement in a Vermont village
April Kelly for Winged, a magical-realist novel about a mother who risks everything for her daughter's dreams of flying
William Alan Thomas for Return of the Convict, a space-adventure update of Dickens' Great Expectations

$6,500 was awarded in all. The third annual North Street Book Prize competition is open now, with a deadline of June 30, 2017. This year's categories are General Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. Winning Writers is one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest). For more information, visit winningwriters.com/north.

Contact:
Adam Cohen
adam@winningwriters.com
413-320-1847

SOURCE Winning Writers