In War’s Shadow, Humanity Endures

The Hemingway Awards Honor 20th & 21st Century Wartime Fiction

The submissions for the 2025 Awards are underway, and Hemingway closes on August 31, 2025!

Ernest Hemingway understood that war reveals both the worst and best of human nature, the capacity for cruelty and the resilience of the human spirit, the cost of conflict and the bonds forged in extremity. The Hemingway Awards carry forward this literary tradition, celebrating authors who explore the profound impact of modern warfare on individuals, families, and entire generations caught in history’s most turbulent moments.

From the trenches of World War I to the complex conflicts of the 21st century, these stories preserve experiences that must not be forgotten. They honor the soldiers who fought, the civilians who endured, the families who waited, and the communities forever changed by the reverberations of war. In an age when conflicts can feel distant or abstract, wartime literature serves as an essential bridge to understanding war’s true human cost.

The Sacred Trust of Wartime Stories

Writing authentic wartime fiction requires both historical knowledge and deep empathy for human suffering. These stories serve as witnesses to history, preserving experiences that statistics and headlines cannot capture. They help readers understand that behind every battle, occupation, or campaign are individual human stories of courage, sacrifice, love, and survival. Whether based on family histories, extensive research, or personal experience, these narratives create emotional connections that ensure historical events remain meaningful to new generations.

The authors recognized by the Hemingway Awards understand that wartime fiction carries special responsibilities, to honor those who served and suffered, to accurately portray the complexities of conflict, and to illuminate the lasting impacts of war on both individuals and society.

Celebrating Our 2024 Grand Prize Winner!

We’re deeply honored to recognize Constance Hays Matsumoto and Kent Matsumoto, whose powerful novel Of White Ashes claimed the 2024 Hemingway Grand Prize with a story that captures the emotional impact of tragic events from a child’s heart and perspective. Inspired by their own family histories, the authors craft a sweeping narrative that follows two Japanese Americans whose lives are shattered by Pearl Harbor: Ruby Ishimaru, who loses her liberty and is forced from Hawaii to mainland incarceration camps, and Koji Matsuo, who endures the menacing clouds of war in Japan while concealing a dangerous family secret.

When destiny brings Ruby and Koji together in post-war California, their magnetic chemistry must overcome the deep wounds of trauma that threaten to make their love another casualty of war. Of White Ashes exemplifies the finest wartime literature by illuminating “the remarkable lives of ordinary people who endure seemingly unbearable hardship with dignity and patience,” creating a story that compels reflection on both human resilience and the ongoing risk of history repeating itself. In addition to ongoing promotional features, Of White Ashes will be regularly promoted throughout the year and for the next five years in our upcoming Hall of Fame posts. Constance Hays Matsumoto and Kent Matsumoto will also be invited to participate in a Chanticleer 10-Question Interview, and Of White Ashes will receive a coveted Chanticleer Editorial Review.

Categories That Honor Every Wartime Experience

The Hemingway Awards recognize the full spectrum of modern wartime stories:

• World War One – The Great War that changed the world forever, exploring the conflict that introduced modern warfare’s devastating scale
• World War Two – The global conflict that defined a generation and reshaped international order
• Women in War – Stories of the often-overlooked contributions and sacrifices of women during wartime
• Occupation/Diaspora – Narratives of displacement, internment, exile, and the struggle to maintain identity under oppression
• Espionage – The shadowy world of intelligence, resistance movements, and the moral complexities of wartime secrets
• Love in Wartime – Romances tested by separation, danger, and the uncertainty that war brings to every relationship
• Specific Campaign/Theater/Battle – Focused explorations of particular military operations, battles, or theaters of war

Each category represents a different lens through which to examine war’s impact on the human experience, from the grand sweep of global conflict to the intimate stories of individual survival and love.

Explore All Historical Fiction Divisions

The Hemingway Awards complete Chanticleer’s comprehensive celebration of historical fiction across all time periods:

Chaucer Awards for Early Historical Fiction – Ancient times through medieval periods, capturing the distant past

Goethe Awards for Late Historical Fiction – Post-1750s historical fiction spanning The Georgian era through 20th century

Laramie Awards for Americana Fiction – First Nation stories, the American frontier, pioneer tales, Civil War narratives, and contemporary westerns

Whether your historical fiction explores ancient civilizations, peaceful periods, or the specific crucible of modern warfare, Chanticleer offers recognition for every historical perspective.

Looking at Wartime Literature Excellence

Check out some of these outstanding wartime fiction works we’ve celebrated recently!

The Rocket Man’s Daughter
By Bruce Gardner

The Rocket Man’s Daughter: A Novel of Family, Faith and Resistance in Nazi Germany by Bruce Gardner tells a harrowing story of German life under the Nazi Regime from 1934 to 1945.

Through the experiences of a young woman whose family is torn by competing loyalties, this riveting tale shines a rarely seen spotlight on some of the most heart wrenching moral dilemmas faced by German civilians and soldiers caught up in the crucible of fascist tyranny and war.

Klara Neumann is the Rocket Man’s Daughter. She’s only fourteen in 1934 when the Führer, Adolf Hitler, finally eliminates all rivals and consolidates his control of Germany under the Nazi Party.

Klara’s family represents a microcosm of the country’s middle socio-economic class, working in government-sponsored roles that demand slavish obedience to the Führer and his decrees. Her father, Erich, is the quintessential ‘rocket man’, a university professor dragged into the Nazi war machine to help his friend and colleague Dr. Wernher von Braun develop the deadly new V-2 rockets intended to terrorize Germany’s future enemies. Her mother, meanwhile, strives to be a dutiful Nazi wife, her brother an honorable Wehrmacht army officer, and her elder sister Elke the devoted leader of a female Hitler Youth section.

Read More Here

Broken Faces
By Chris Karlsen and Jennifer Conner

A towering achievement, Broken Faces: Historical Romance Based on True WWI Events by Chris Karlsen and Jennifer A Conner follows two young people who, for different reasons, embark on a journey to restore the self-esteem torn from wounded soldiers by bloody conflict.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 plunged Europe into one of the most horrific wars in history. Daily British papers featured articles about a bleak future. London quickly felt the effects of the war, with stores closing and basic goods in limited supply.

Abigail Belorman, a young American woman and talented sculptor, had relocated to Britain with her newlywed husband Theo, the US ambassador to England. Pained by Theo’s emotional neglect, Abigail finds comfort in visiting injured soldiers who had returned from the front to a nearby hospital. Each of the young men there has a story to tell and wounds to recover from. Some, however, suffered irreparable damage to their faces, along with any chance at a normal life taken from them, and they will be forced into isolation.

Read More Here

Crossroads of Empire
By Michael J. Cooper

A Hemingway First Place Winner!

Crossroads of Empire by Michael J. Cooper brings readers back into sixteen-year-old Evan Sinclair’s journey through the battlefields of WWI. The adventures and the war itself pick up right where the award-winning Wages of Empire left off.As in the first book, Evan begins his part of this story by going missing, this time not just from his father’s perspective, but from his own. Severely injured during his service with the Flemish resistance, Evan is discharged from a French field hospital. He’s on his way back to England by hospital ship when it is sunk by a German U-boat. When he reaches British shores as the sole survivor in a lifeboat, he’s left with amnesia and has no memory of who he is.

Evan’s search for his own identity leads him to Rosslyn Castle, the Sinclair family’s ancestral home in Scotland. There he unravels secret family histories and connections long buried. Finally, with assistance from a wise woman, Evan regains his memory. Without the protection the amnesia provided, he faces a host of painful and traumatic memories.

Read More Here

See our Review of Book 1 Here

One of Four
By Travis Davis

A Hemingway First Place Winner!

One of Four: World War One Through the Eyes of an Unknown Soldier by Travis Davis is a compassionate and intimate portrait of the tenuous and unforgiving First World War, as shown through the eyes of an American soldier on France’s front lines. Based on real people and events in 1918 France, One of Four begins with a young French girl, Camille, who stumbles upon a diary lying next to an unknown American soldier. He was killed among his comrades in a German ambush near the banks of the Aire River, as he tried to protect his fellow soldiers. When Camille comes of age, she leaves her hometown to seek a better life in Paris. There, she is killed after joining a German resistance group. But before her death, she tucked the soldier’s diary in her Bible and hid it in a local bookstore.

Decades later, a man by the name of Walter travels to France with his son, Alex, to whom he’d become estranged after the painful divorce from Alex’s mother. He hopes this will be a journey of healing and exploration and that their time together will revive their shaky relationship. While there, Alex purchases the Bible left by Camille many years ago. By reading the hidden diary entries of the soldier together, Alex and Walter’s relationships takes an unexpected turn.

Read More Here

Everything We Had
By Tom Burkhalter

A Series First Place Winner!

Everything We Had, book one of Tom Burkhalter’s No Merciful War series is an inexorable thrill that will grip readers tight. It starts with a poker game, through which a main character’s luck soon becomes evident. But will that luck hold out?

Jack—the poker player—and Charlie—Jack’s older brother—have been separated by war, even though that war has yet to be declared. Everything We Had focuses more on the machinations leading up to US involvement in World War II than on actual combat. The gears of war that have so many young men caught in them move with gradual but inevitable force, and so Everything We Had takes a more thoughtful approach to a historic moment in time.

Connecting with the characters is a gradual process as you get to know the intricacies that make up their individual personalities. This sets the reader up to feel the emotions of the characters as they face an uncertain fate, and throughout the book the author’s clear and methodical research shines with details such as specific views, locations, and—most notably—comprehensive descriptions of the airplanes Jack and Charlie pilot. This allows the reader to become deeply familiar with the motivations of the characters and the capabilities of the airplanes they fly.

Read More Here

These works demonstrate how the best wartime literature combines historical accuracy with profound emotional truth to honor both history and humanity.

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See the Chanticleer Difference for Yourself!

We’re honored to receive the wartime stories that authors trust us with each year. The Chanticleer International Book Awards offers an incredible $30,000 in cash, prizes, and promotion across all divisions!

The Hemingway Awards provide recognition for stories that preserve crucial historical experiences while exploring the timeless themes of courage, sacrifice, and resilience. Whether you’re drawing from family history, extensive research, or historical records, these awards celebrate both the literary craft and moral responsibility required to tell wartime stories with authenticity and respect.

Your Wartime Story Matters

In an era when the veterans of major 20th-century conflicts are passing away, preserving their experiences through literature becomes increasingly important. Your wartime story, whether based on family history, historical research, or imagined experiences grounded in historical truth, helps ensure that the lessons of war and the resilience of the human spirit are not forgotten.

Honor the legacy of those who endured war’s trials—the deadline is August 31, 2025!

Submit to the Hemingway Awards today and help us preserve the human stories behind history’s greatest conflicts!