2022

Nowak A Semi-Finalist

Pamela Nowak's Necessary Deceptions: The Women of Wyatt Earp has been named a semi-finalist in the Laramie Book Awards.

Holme Named Finalist

Tyler Holme's Beet Life was named a finalist in the American Best Fest Best Book Awards in the category of Humor & Satire.

Evans Wins International Award

M.J. Evans took the big prize in Teen Historical Fiction in the Global International Book Awards with her YA novel, The Sand Pounder.

CAL Authors Win Will Rogers Medallions

Pamela Nowak took Gold in Traditional Western Fiction with Never Let Go, Nancy Oswald took Gold in the Young Readers category with Bats, Bandits & Buggies, and Randi-Samuelson Brown took the Copper Award for her Short Story, Too Much Dancing Going On.

Raybon Named As Finalist

Patricia Raybon's All That is Secret has been named a finalist in the Christy Awards.

Nowak Reels In Finalist Designations

Never Let Go by Pamela Nowak has made the short- list for the 2021 Goethe Awards for outstanding works in post-1750s Historical Fiction. Her book is also is a Double Finalist (Historical Fiction AND Women's Fiction) in the 2022 Feathered Quill Book Awards.

Jim and Stephanie Kroepfl Honored with Award

Merged, by Jim and Stephanie Kroepfl, win the Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing

Art Goodtimes Has Busy Winter

Art Goodtimes has been busy. He was featured at the Bardic Trails zoom series hosted by the Wilkinson Public Library in Telluride in February. The Crestone Poetry Festival hosted Art’s Talking Gourds poetry program at the Telluride Institute for the 4th year. Art will be reading for PEN: San Miguel de Allende at a virtual performance of PEN International's Our Voices Our Resistance in March.

Barbara Nickless Contributor to Denver Noir Anthology

Denver Noir will be published on May 3, 2022 by Akashic Books. Denver Noir joins over 100 volumes in Akashic's award-winning Noir Series of location-based dark fiction anthologies. Denver local Cynthia Swanson (author of The Bookseller and The Glass Forest) has pulled together 13 contributors who know the city best to pen short tales set in distinct locations from Aurora to Washington Park. The anthology includes a story by CAL member Barbara Nickless. 

Annie Dawid Wins Grand Prize

Paradise Undone, A Novel of Jonestown by Annie Dawid is the Grand prize winner of the 2022 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition.

She also recently won the UK Chipping Norton Literary Short Story Prize for "Kenny, Winking."

Penny Hamilton Awarded the Bessie Minor Swift Grant

Penny will author of a new Colorado literacy and history book for juvenile readers about Trailblazing Women, especially in Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Craig, Steamboat Springs, Eagle, Grand, and Summit counties. However, because readers will be statewide, many Laureates of the Colorado Women’s, Author’s, Aviation, Sports, and other Halls of Fame will be featured. The projected release is early December 2022.

Eight CAL Members named as Colorado Book Award Finalists

Todd Fahnestock, Khyven the Unkillable; Kendra Merritt, Magic and Misrule; Scott Graham, Canyonlands Carnage; Jodi Bowersox, Red Rabbit on the Run; Nancy Oswald, Bats, Buggies, and Bandits; Melissa Payne, The Night of Many Endings; Todd Mitchell, Breakthrough; Carina Bissett, Shadow Atlas.

CIPA Names Eight CAL Members As Finalists For Their Evvy Awards

Jerry Fabyanic, Food For Thought; Jeanette Minniti, The Only Way Home, Nancy Oswald, Bats, Bandits & Buggies; Cheryl Nifoussi, Feelings Are Friends, Joni Franks, Sagebrush and the Disappearing Dark Sky and The Crooked Forest, Legacy of the Holey Stone; Jodi Bowersox, Red Rabbit on the Run; Donna Mazitelli, Mosaic Heart: Pieces of an Unfinished Life; Victoria Wolf, At-One-Ment.

Mimi Pockross Interviewed For Podcast

Mimi Pockross, author of "Pulling Harvey Out Of Her Hat: The Amazing Story of Mary Coyle Chase," was interviewed for a podcast dedicated to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights. 

Entitled "All the Drama" and aired on BROADWAYRADIO.COM, the program focuses on each of the playwrights' stories and is written and produced by Jan Simon, herself a sometimes Pulitzer Prize juror. 

Irv Sternberg Passes Away at Age 91

It's with great sadness to report that Irv Sternberg, a longtime active member of CAL, has passed away. Irv served in various CAL positions and won CAL awards including as recently as 2021. He was a former fournalist in New Jersey and worked in public relations in Colorado. He published three nonfiction books and ten novels, including his funny Izzy Brand mysteries, featuring an aging stand-up comic and amateur sleuth working out of a senior living facility.

Carol Dow Has Contract For New Mystery Series

Carol Dow signed a 3-book contract with Coffeetown Press for her aromatherapy murder mystery series. The first book Scent of Murder will be released next year, followed by Whiff of Murder and Killer Scent. Carol writes these books under the pen name Carolina Dow.

Sheri Cobb South Signs With Dragonblade

Sheri Cobb South has signed a contract with Dragonblade Publishing for a three-book series of historical romances. Set in England's elegant Regency period, "Bartholomew Fayre" will trace the adventures of the three Fayre siblings--Penelope, Priscilla, and Oliver--as they find love amidst the color and excitement of London's annual Bartholomew Fair. The first book in the series, Fairest of the Fayre, is scheduled for publication in July 2023. Tantor Audio has acquired audiobook rights to all three books in the series.

Nickless, Mizushima, and Bowersox Named as Finalists

The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Awards has named their finalists, with three CAL members on the list. Barbara Nickless, At First Light, and Margaret Mizushima, Striking Range are named in the Best Investigator category, while Jodi Bowersox, Red Rabbit on the Run, is on the Best Mystery list.

Annie Dawid Honored With Finalist Designations

Annie Dawid was named as a finalist in Memoir for the Book Excellence Awards. Put Off My Sackcloth was also runner up for memoir at the Los Angeles Book Festival and received Honorable Mention at the 2021 San Francisco Book Festival.

Iona Morrison Receives Award

Morrison's paranormal romance Searching For Closure won a Book Excellence Award.

Mizushima Receives Literary Award

Margaret Mizushima has won a Willa Literary Award for her novel Striking Range in the Multiform Fiction category

CAL Authors Place in American Fiction Awards 

Todd Mitchell--Namer of Spirits--Pre-teen fiction WINNER

M.J. Evans--The Sand Pounder--Young Adult FINALIST

Joni Franks--Sagebrush and the Disappearing Dark Sky--Children's Picture Book, Hardcover FINALIST

Kevin Bowersox-- The Ouroboros of Oon--Humor FINALIST

Jodi Bowersox--The Diamond Diva Vendetta--Romantic Suspense FINALIST

Jodi Bowersox-- Red Rabbit on the Run--Romantic Suspense FINALIST

Mitchell Takes Gold

Todd Mitchell won the Gold in the Readers Favorite Awards for his nonfiction book, Breakthrough.