The Hearten Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Uplifting and Inspiring Non-Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Lynne Spriggs O’Connor’s book, Elk Love will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Hearten contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year ‘round!
The 2024 Hearten Winners were announced at the 2025 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!
Join us in celebrating the 2024 First Place Hearten Winners!
Genét Simone – Teaching in the Dark
Also the 2024 Chanticleer Cover Design Grand Prize Winner for Non-Fiction!
A young teacher buys a one-way ticket to Shishmaref, Alaska. Within minutes of landing, she finds herself dealing with unexpected, rustic accommodations, and the culture shock of living in a remote Iñuit community. She relies on her courage, resilience, and wit while enduring freezing temperatures, power outages, loneliness, and first-year teacher anxieties and missteps, but eventually realizes that those challenges pale in comparison to the life lessons she learns about the heart of teaching—lessons from her students, their culture, and their community, on the vast, windy landscape at the edge of the Chukchi Sea.
From Chanticleer:
How does place shape who we are—and who we’ll become? In this memoir, Teaching in the Dark, Genét Simone puts that question to the test by recounting her first year as a teacher.
The initial year of teaching is never an easy feat, but for Simone it was especially challenging, and transformative. She spent it with Native students in the remote island village of Shishmaref, on the Arctic edge of Alaska—no small wonder the school year became an unforgettable one.
Today, Simone has decades of teaching experience to draw upon. Yet, in this memoir she rarely employs her present voice to reflect on the past. Instead, the narrator remains in the moment: a young and inexperienced Simone, who only knows that she feels destined to be a teacher. When she signs up for the Shishmaref teaching job, she doesn’t even realize that it’s on an island.
Equipped with snow boots and passion, she arrives on the island only to realize just how unprepared she is.
David Hutton – Drums of a Distant Tribe
This is a true-life story of a crusader for peace amid the backdrop of war and personal loss. You will be captivated as you experience the poetry of life and discover an amazing intervention revealing the Afterlife.
Walk slowly lest you miss your turn in the forest.
Etsuko Diamond Miyagi – Diamond: The Memoir of a Lost Daughter of Japan
DIAMOND: The Memoir of a Lost Daughter of Japan tells the tale of a small girl orphaned in a hostile foreign country, who must live by her wits and courage until fate decides to favor her many years later.
Told in the thrilling voice of an expert storyteller, this memoir reads like page-turner fiction yet is factual down to the letter. It is a compassionate look into human hearts under the worst of conditions, and at what a gentle soul will do to protect the people she loves.
Set in the Philippines near the end of the Second World War, DIAMOND rolls back the curtain on a time and place about which little has been written. It is history. It is drama. It is a story of personal triumph.
From Chanticleer:
In a world ravaged by conflict and loss, Etsuko Diamond Miyagi’s memoir, Diamond: The Memoir of a Lost Daughter of Japan is a shining testament to the beauty of love and the human spirit’s ability to overcome adversity.
Etsuko enjoys a peaceful childhood on the Philippine island of Mindanao, where her father owns an abacá plantation. But they are not safe when guerilla forces destroy her village murdering everyone and leaving her as the sole survivor. This deeply personal narrative of grief chronicles Etsuko’s harrowing journey to find solace and joy after the death of her parents.
At first, passed from house to house, Etsuko is forced to work as a domestic servant until a kind family takes her in. However, her safety and survival is once again in danger when she’s forced to leave her adopted family and take a position at Chief Doming Apostol’s estate in Magpet. It is there Etsuko receives the name ‘Diamond.’
Diamond works for years in the Apostol household where not all is terrible. She forms a loving bond as the caretaker for the youngest of the children. When their father is imprisoned, the household falls apart, but Diamond stays.
Rachael Siddoway and Sonja Wasden – An Impossible Life: A True Story of Hope and Mental Illness
Also a 2024 Journey First Place Winner!
An award-winning and best-selling memoir, An Impossible Life, tells the powerful true account of one woman’s descent into depressive and manic episodes and how she found lifesaving therapy and medication to overcome and triumph. When thirty-five-year-old Sonja Wasden is involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital by her husband and father, she is sure it is a mistake. Wife of a CEO, mother of three, and living in a beautiful suburb, Sonja’s life appears ideal. How did she get here?
In this gripping and breathtaking narrative that makes the reader feel as though they are listening in on a private conversation, Sonja reveals her delusions and battles with mental illness, motherhood, and marriage. When all hope seems lost, this true story of perseverance is inspiring and unforgettable.An Impossible Life is a lighthouse of hope for those facing an all-consuming mental illness, either for themselves or for someone they love.
Susan Cole – Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love, and Loss
HOLDING FAST: A Memoir of Sailing, Love, and Loss is the story of leaving everything behind to follow her husband’s lifelong dream of sailing away. Many people dream of escaping reality but few actually go.
Blond, blue-eyed, irreverent John bursts into Susan’s life in her twenties with a dream of sailing off. Susan dreams of settling down and doesn’t want to go. A three-year voyage with their young daughter profoundly changes their lives. A gripping adventure story and an inspirational memoir of finding our power in the unlikeliest of places.
Tony Jeton Selimi – The Unfakeable Code®
The Unfakeable Code(R) Take Back Control, Lead Authentically and Live Freely on Your Terms.
Meticulously researched and written by Tony Jeton Selimi, The Unfakeable Code(R) explores the fierce scientific, psychological, leadership and business impact of wearing ‘masks’, feeling stuck, powerless, out of control, and being a people pleaser, disengaged and unproductive at home and work – a growing problem in a fast-paced world full of expectations, information overload, fake news and uncertainty, which will leave behind a cosmic trail of mental health issues, acute social confusion and a significant rise in unemployment.
Empowering readers to redefine themselves and overcome the adversity, anxiety and stagnancy likely blighting their lives, Selimi truly breaks new ground in a volume that gives you the clarity, the hope, and the code to own your power and continue to evolve into the authentic, unfakeable leader you were born to be. The Unfakeable Code(R) offers a fresh and robust five-step methodology for business, personal or professional transformation. It assists in upgrading your psychology and harmonising body-mind-heart intelligence so it can deal with any form of anxiety, conflict, and stress.
Throughout the book, Tony J. Selimi shares inspiring actual client stories who have used the five principles to successfully liberate themselves from the emotional baggage and distress by fully completing the five-step method. It’s also been a hit among critics, too, with one recently writing, “The worldview developed here transcends science, dogma, and belief, giving readers a new code to reconnect with their true, authentic individual and the Divine within that knows how to take back control, lead authentically and live freely on your terms.” Foreword written by Dr John Demartini, a World Renown Human Behavioural Specialist.
Find it on Amazon!
Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2024 Hearten First Place Winners!
Got a great Fiction Book? The 2025 Hearten Book Awards are open through the end of August!
The Cover Design Awards recognizes emerging new talent and outstanding works in every genre. The Grand Prize Winner, Genét Simone’s book, Teaching in The Dark will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article, as well as be featured on the Cover Design contest page year ’round!
How does place shape who we are—and who we’ll become? In this memoir, Teaching in the Dark, Genét Simone puts that question to the test by recounting her first year as a teacher.
