Whitney Awards
The Whitney Awards are awards given annually for novels by LDS authors. Established in 2007, they are named after Orson F. Whitney, a prominent early member of the LDS Church. There are several categories for which novels may be nominated. The Whitney Awards are a semi-independent non-profit organization affiliated with the LDStorymakers, a guild for LDS authors.
Categories
Due to the limited number of titles released by LDS authors, several of the genre awards have been combined., there are eight genre categories:
Adult
- Romance
- Mystery/Suspense
- Speculative
- Historical
- General
- Youth General
- Youth Speculative
- Middle Grade
- Best Novel by a New Author
- Novel of the Year
Process
To be eligible, a novel must be written by an LDS author during the award year, and be at least 50,000 words long. Any reader can nominate a book. Once a book has received five or more nominations, it becomes an official nominee. The official nominees are presented to the Whitney Awards Committee which checks for eligibility and acts as a preliminary judging panel, reducing the number of nominees to no more than five per category.Finally, ballots are sent to the Whitney Awards Academy, an invitation-only group consisting of authors, bookstore owners/managers, distributors, critics, and other industry professionals. By a popular vote, they decide on the winners. The awards are presented at a dinner held at the conclusion of the annual LDStorymakers conference and writing "boot camp."
Until the 2010 awards, books were not allowed to win in more than one category.
Name
The awards are named after Orson F. Whitney, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as a poet and writer. In 1888, Elder Whitney delivered a speech entitled "Home Literature" in which he stated:We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God's ammunition is not exhausted. His brightest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God's name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundations may now be low in earth.
The phrase "We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own" has been adopted as the slogan of the Whitney Awards, and is printed on the trophy.
Winners and finalists 2007 - present
| Best Novel of the Year | Best Youth Fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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