Every year, the YMCA's Downtown Writers Center recognizes the great books published each year by authors from our region at the CNY Book Awards. Last night's awards reception was our first opportunity to be back in-person, and it was a blast!
This year's Awards were sponsored by our friends at Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital, Nine Mile Press, Judy Carr, Sarah Freligh, and Vita DeMarchi. Awards were offered in Fiction, Nonfiction, Children's Books, and Poetry. Nine Mile also presented this year's Bob Herz Memorial Award for Literary Engagement.
CNY BOOK AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S BOOKS,
sponsored by Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital
Winner: Jennifer Catney, for Filling the Manger
Judge: Anonymous
CNY BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
Winner: Martin A. Sweeney, for The Remarkable Life of Alfred Haskell, Jr.
Finalists:
Here, Where Death Delights by Mary Jumbelic, M.D.
Desert Wind: My Life in Qatar by Peter Fortunato
Gannentaha: The 17th Century French Jesuit Mission, by Jonathan Anderson
Judge: Steven Huff
CNY BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION,
sponsored by Vita DeMarchi
Winner: Mary McLaughlin Slechta, for Mulberry Street Stories
Finalists:
Christopher Gould, for The Boys & Girls of America
David Grannis Moore, for A Past Life
Judge: George Guida
CNY BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
sponsored by Judy Carr and Sarah Freligh
Winner: Bad Animal, by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
Finalists:
Bone Language by Jamaica Baldwin
Yours, Creature by Jessica Cuello
Judge: Lynn Domina
Our friends at Nine Mile Press also presented the annual Bob Herz Memorial Award for Literary Engagement to Ed Kochian, for his many years of dedicated support of literature, literacy, and the arts.
We hope you'll join us for next year's CNYBAs... and if you have a book published this year, don't forget to nominate it by 12/31 for next year's Awards!