Andrew Smith's Blog - Posts Tagged "ippy-awards"
'EDITH’S WAR' WINS GOLD AT 2011 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER BOOK AWARDS
On winning Gold at Independent Publisher Book Awards, but not being in NYC to pick up the bling
You’ve got to hand it to our American cousins, if anything is worth doing in the U.S. of A. it’s worth doing HUGE. On my return last Thursday from seven weeks in the United Kingdom, an oversized and heavy envelope was waiting outside my door from the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards, held in New York during my absence. Risking a hernia, I hefted the envelope into my apartment where it landed with a thud on my kitchen counter. Inside was a giant piece of bling — a gold metal disc the size of a hockey puck — that even rapper Lil Wayne might judge to be overindulgent. I couldn’t resist unravelling the blue satin ribbon, at least the width of a 4G phone, and placing it around my neck. The behemoth of a medal dangled weightily, threatening to crush my sternum. I raised my arms in triumphant Olympic-podium style, and then I faked a bite of the glittering metal disc for the imaginary host of flashing cameras in front of my fireplace — emulating my idol, champion tennis player Rafael Nadal.
I have to say that the excess of my medal was refreshing after the restraint of the United Kingdom, where any hint of ostentatious display is anathema (the Royal Family excepted, of course) and where achievement tends to be so understated one might believe it was a subject of shame. I know of what I speak, as a Brit I realize I’m capable of perverse modesty. But I love my winner’s bling and, were it not for my innate English reserve, would wear it out in public every single day for the next year. Maybe I’ll pluck up the courage to wear it at the next book signing. I regret not being in New York to pick up my medal in true American, unabashed style, and be recorded, like Nadal, by actual flashing cameras, but duty called. My brother and I were in Liverpool helping our 95-year-old mother move from her apartment to an assisted-living home.
It occurred to me, while we were lugging my mother’s unwanted clothes to charity shops and her discarded possessions to the dump, that she and the handful of elderly women in her new home were the last of the Ediths. It won’t be long before her generation — who eked out World War II on the home front — will be gone. The thought made me glad I’d written Edith’s War, because it adds to the record and memory of a soon-to-be-lost group who lived through remarkable times ... and, of course, I’m delirious about the bling.
This year’s awards attracted 3,907 entries, and the medalists represent books published in 45 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, seven Canadian provinces, and seven countries overseas. Launched in 1996, it is the first unaffiliated awards program open exclusively to independent, university, and self-published titles.
F.Y.I. The winner of the Gold Award for Fiction, Western Canada was Rudy Wiebe: Collected Stories, 1955-2010, by Rudy Wiebe (University of Alberta Press).
You’ve got to hand it to our American cousins, if anything is worth doing in the U.S. of A. it’s worth doing HUGE. On my return last Thursday from seven weeks in the United Kingdom, an oversized and heavy envelope was waiting outside my door from the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards, held in New York during my absence. Risking a hernia, I hefted the envelope into my apartment where it landed with a thud on my kitchen counter. Inside was a giant piece of bling — a gold metal disc the size of a hockey puck — that even rapper Lil Wayne might judge to be overindulgent. I couldn’t resist unravelling the blue satin ribbon, at least the width of a 4G phone, and placing it around my neck. The behemoth of a medal dangled weightily, threatening to crush my sternum. I raised my arms in triumphant Olympic-podium style, and then I faked a bite of the glittering metal disc for the imaginary host of flashing cameras in front of my fireplace — emulating my idol, champion tennis player Rafael Nadal.
I have to say that the excess of my medal was refreshing after the restraint of the United Kingdom, where any hint of ostentatious display is anathema (the Royal Family excepted, of course) and where achievement tends to be so understated one might believe it was a subject of shame. I know of what I speak, as a Brit I realize I’m capable of perverse modesty. But I love my winner’s bling and, were it not for my innate English reserve, would wear it out in public every single day for the next year. Maybe I’ll pluck up the courage to wear it at the next book signing. I regret not being in New York to pick up my medal in true American, unabashed style, and be recorded, like Nadal, by actual flashing cameras, but duty called. My brother and I were in Liverpool helping our 95-year-old mother move from her apartment to an assisted-living home.
It occurred to me, while we were lugging my mother’s unwanted clothes to charity shops and her discarded possessions to the dump, that she and the handful of elderly women in her new home were the last of the Ediths. It won’t be long before her generation — who eked out World War II on the home front — will be gone. The thought made me glad I’d written Edith’s War, because it adds to the record and memory of a soon-to-be-lost group who lived through remarkable times ... and, of course, I’m delirious about the bling.
This year’s awards attracted 3,907 entries, and the medalists represent books published in 45 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, seven Canadian provinces, and seven countries overseas. Launched in 1996, it is the first unaffiliated awards program open exclusively to independent, university, and self-published titles.
F.Y.I. The winner of the Gold Award for Fiction, Western Canada was Rudy Wiebe: Collected Stories, 1955-2010, by Rudy Wiebe (University of Alberta Press).
