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SCBWI Names 2012 Amazon.com Work-in-Progress Grant recipents - Monday, July 30, 2012

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2012 AMAZON WIP GRANT WINNERS NAMED
 
The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, is pleased to announce the winners and runners-up for 2012 Amazon.com Work-in-Progress Grants.  Each year, with the help of a generous grant from Amazon.com, SCBWI awards up-and-coming authors grants to help them finish promising works in progress in five children’s literature categories: Contemporary Novel, Multi-cultural, Nonfiction, General and Unpublished Author. Winning grants are for $2,000. Runner-up grants are for $500.  The 2012 winners and runners-up for each category are:
 
Contemporary Novel:
 
Winner: David Amaditz for Dirty Secrets
Runner-up: Todd Dillard for Periwinkle

Letter of Merit: Taiia Smart Young

Multi-Cultural:
 
Winner: Nancy Bo Flood for Blue: From Harm's Way
Runner-up: Tina Athaide for Impossible Goodbyes

Letters of merit: Jennifer Anne Kaplan and Sandra Wilson Headen

General:
 
Winner: Daniel Rousseau The Brown Pony
Runner-up: Laura Nolen The Ark

Letter of Merit: Laurisa Reyes

Nonfiction Research:
 
Winner: Tracy Nelson Maurer for Noah Webster Argues for America
Runner-up: Nina Kidd for The Cougar Connection: Scientists Track Mountain Lions to Save America’s Wilderness

Letters of merit:  Suzanne Buckingham and Donna Bratton

 
The Unpublished Author Grant, which is an additional award selected from nominations across all the categories was awarded to for which was submitted to the category, was awarded to Sharon Barry for Seven Wooden Crates: A True Story of Friendship after War
 
Barbara Karlin Picture Book Grants:

Winner: Sharifa H. Grant
Runner-up: Penny Len Klostermann


This year’s recipients plan to use their money for a variety of purposes from research trips, continuing education classes and workshops, to buying supplies and getting child care to free up writing time.
 
Our congratulations to all the winners and a special thanks to the judges, along with first readers, who volunteer their time for these grants.  We would also like to thank Amazon.com for their generous grant which makes these awards possible.
 
Applications for the 2013 grants will be available here after the first of October. All SCBWI members are eligible to apply.

More information about some of the winning manuscripts:

Dirty Secrets: While exploring the pitch black shafts of an abandoned coal mine, 15-year-old Matthew Kowalski discovers a deeper darkness in the secrets and lies that have ripped apart his family

Periwinkle: After Alwan Joseph’s best friend Angela commits suicide by throwing herself off the Brooklyn bridge, Alwan finds himself in the After School Maladjusted Loser’s Club; a writing therapy group that sends him on a journey to write the suicide note Angela didn’t leave behind.

Blue: From Harm's Way: It's tough enough to negotiate mixed cultures, but when Tess's older sister enlists and is deployed, Tess reluctantly agrees to help her grandmother with sheep camp.  In an isolated canyon on the Navajo Reservation, Tess begins to discover what it means to be Navajo and White and do what you swore you would never do again.

Impossible Goodbyes: 1972, Uganda. When President Edi Amin begins weeding out non Ugandan citizens, eleven year old Asha isn't worried, but as the violence closes in, she must face that Uganda is becoming dangerous or risk her own safety and that of her family.

The Brown Pony: The story of seventeen-year-old Bragg Barlow's struggle to find love and redemption in the quicksand of mistrust and prejudice between whites, blacks, and Seminoles in 1933 Florida

The Ark: During Earth’s final hours, a young convict plots to escape from prison and steal a spot on a spaceship in order to reconcile with her family.

Noah Webster Argues for America: This book introduces young readers to the feisty revolutionary who fought not with a gun but with a pen—writing the first American textbooks for American schoolhouses, contriving a new American alphabet with Benjamin Franklin, promoting simplified American spellings, and even publishing a new dictionary with truly American words not found in the haughty British volumes—to galvanize citizens to break away from England in every way.

The Cougar Connection: Scientists Track Mountain Lions to Save America’s Wilderness: Scientists in Southern California discover why a population of wild mountain lions there is struggling, and reveal how human-built wildlife corridors can bring hope for the animals’ survival.

Seven Wooden Crates: A True Story of Friendship after War: Seven Wooden Crates tells a true story, set in the wake of World War II, of children in Washington, DC, who collected a half ton of school supplies for students in Hiroshima and of the Japanese students who sealed the friendship with beautiful watercolor drawings.

You may contact any of the recipients thorugh their member profiles at www.scbwi.org or by emailing scbwi@scbwi.org.