SCBWI ILF Takes on Ann Whitford Paul and Writer’s Digest Award

The iconic Ann Whitford Paul and Writer’s Digest Most Promising Picture Book Manuscript Award, formerly given by the SCBWI, is now to be administered by the Impact and Legacy Fund! The redesigned award will offer two $1,500 prizes, one for a fiction manuscript and one for nonfiction. Each winner will also receive an additional $500 stipend to apply to marketing and selling their manuscript. To submit your manuscript for the award, please look at the award’s webpage for criteria and guidelines.

Because this is an SCBWI ILF award, it is open to nonmembers as well as members of the SCBWI. Feel free to share widely.

Lin Oliver, Managing Director of the SCBWI ILF, says, “The ILF is thrilled to be able to offer this career-launching award. It is fully funded for a minimum of five years, and thus becomes an integral part of the ILF Awards Portfolio. Our gratitude to Ann Whitford Paul and Writer’s Digest for their generosity and our best wishes to all the entrants.”

The award opens for submissions on April 1st, 2025 and closes May 1st, 2025 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. 

And the winner of the 2024/2025 Russell Freedman Award is…

Drum roll please! We are beyond excited to announce that Coming Home: A Hopi Resistance Story, written and illustrated by master Hopi woodcarver Mavasta Honyouti, is the winner of our most recent cycle of the Russell Freedman Award for Nonfiction for a Better World!

Every page of this incredible picture book is a triumph of storytelling and illustration. As Honyouti shares the story of his grandfather’s experience at a residential boarding school, he invites us to consider the roles our families play in building vibrant traditions of resistance. Presented in both English and Hopi, Coming Home not only recounts an intimate perspective on Native American boarding schools and the painful chapter of United States history that lead to their establishment, but also offers a pathway for generational healing. We highly recommend reading this remarkable book, which was published by Levine Querido in 2024.

Congratulations, Mavasta! 

Past winners of the Russell Freedman Award include Accountable by Dashka Slater, Freedom! by Jetta Grace Martin, Joshua Bloom, and Waldo E. Martin Jr., and The Tower of Life by Chana Stiefel, illustrated by Susan Gal.

The Russell Freedman Award for Nonfiction for a Better World will open for another cycle in the Fall of 2025.