by Catherine Marshall, an author who first became famous with the publication of her first book, ‘A Man Called Peter’, about her deceased husband, a popular pastor who had also been Chaplain to the US Senate. Her first novel, Christy, was published in 1967, and with more than 10 million copies sold, is one of the most popular and influential Christian novels ever. The Christy Award was started in 1999 when a group of Christian publishers confirmed the need for establishing a Christian fiction award to recognize novelists and novels of excellence in several genres of Christian fiction.
The Christy Award is designed to:
- Nurture and encourage creativity and quality in the writing and publishing of fiction written from a Christian worldview;
- Bring a new awareness of the breadth and depth of fiction choices available, helping to broaden the readership;
- Provide opportunity to recognize novelists whose work may not have reached bestseller status.
Entries open in October each year to all books published and/or distributed in the United States in that calendar year, with the finalists announced in May and the winners announced in July the following year. So, for example, the 2012 Christy Awards are for books published in the 2011 calendar year.
If you are new to Christian publishing and don’t know what to read, you could do a lot worse than start with some of the Christy Award finalists and winners in a genre you enjoy. However, as with any award, winning a prize is not going to guarantee that you will enjoy the novel (while I have read and enjoyed many of the finalists and winning novels, there is at least one that I thought was a wall-banger, even though it was in a category that I usually read and enjoy. The finalists for 2012 are: Contemporary Romance/Romantic Suspense
Contemporary Series, Sequels and Novellas
Contemporary Standalone
First Novel
Historical
Historical Romance
Suspense
Visionary
Young Adult
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