Demystify Your Non-Fiction with Chanticleer
In Fiction, genre boundaries can sometimes seem so clear, scifi has aliens and mysteries have a murder, but how do we organize Non-Fiction?
Chanticleer offers a wide variety of Non-Fiction Book Awards, and here we’ll focus on the Narrative Non-Fiction Divisions.
These Divisions are:
The Original*
The Journey Awards came first. These awards shine bright as the lodestar of quality for the others. As more Non-Fiction submissions came in, the number of Non-Fiction Divisions expanded to fill the need. Right now, the Journey Awards focuses primarily on stories Overcoming Adversity. Often tear-jerkers, these stories highlight the resiliency of being human.
The 2021 Grand Prize Winner for the Journey Awards was Better off Bald by Andrea Wilson Woods.
There exists a bond between sisters, and often that bond becomes a connection so strong that time cannot erase the love and the longing for the other. Andrea Wilson Woods defines such a bond in Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days.
Woods details the choreographed life she lives with her sister Adrienne, who has been diagnosed with cancer. Together they begin their dance, pirouetting around IV ports and long lists of medications. Sisters in life, love, and an all-out war against liver cancer.
Woods retells her story with compassion and a rational eye for detail while embracing all the deep emotions that ravage her as she records every one of the 147 days after the initial diagnosis.
Their confusion about how this could have happened and their hope that they can beat this “thing” growing inside Adrienne are present on each page. Woods makes note of the doctors by name, the nurses by nicknames, and the hospital visits by hours spent waiting, waiting, waiting for help to come and rescue them from the nightmare that cancer has made of their lives.
*Note: The Journey Awards deadline has already passed, but the 2023 Journey Awards are open now!
Putting in the Research
Following the Journey Awards, it became clear we needed Awards focused on Journalism and Reporting. Enter the Nellie Bly Awards, named for reporter Nellie Bly whose journey around the Earth inspired the story Around the World in 80 Days. These books can back up all their facts with hard dates and maybe even an appendix at the end. They tell the stories that call out for their place in history.
The 2021 Grand Prize Winner for the Nellie Bly Awards was America’s Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor by Nicole Evelina.
After being forgotten for nearly 130 years, the “Mother of Suffrage in Missouri” and her husband are finally taking their rightful place in history.
St. Louisans Virginia and Francis Minor forever changed the direction of women’s rights by taking the issue to the Supreme Court for the first and only time in 1875, a feat never eclipsed even by their better-known peers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Yet despite a myriad of accomplishments and gaining notoriety in their own time, the Minors’ names have largely faded from memory. In 1867, Virginia founded the nation’s first organization solely dedicated to women’s suffrage—two years before Anthony formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). Virginia and Francis were also the brains behind the groundbreaking idea that women were given the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, a philosophy the NWSA adopted for nearly a decade.
Opening up Personal Narratives
As the Journey Awards began filling up, it became difficult to recognize both the uplifting and inspirational work as well as the work that looked at the darker side of what people overcome in their life. To try and highlight this warmer tone of writing, the Hearten Awards were introduced, so this “chicken soup for the soul” style of book could be brought to the forefront.
The 2021 Grand Prize Winner for the Hearten Awards was DAWGS: A True Story of Lost Animals and the Kids Who Rescued Them by Diane Trull & Meredith Wargo
The Newest Division from Chanticleer
The Military and Front Line Awards are close to our heart at Chanticleer. We’ve often wanted enough submissions for this to be its own Division as we all have family who has served in the military. However, we wanted these Awards to represent all walks of life that provide Service to Others like firefighters, teachers, medical workers, and the family of those who work to make our world a better place.
The 2021 Grand Prize Winner for the Military and Front Line Awards was Dear Bob by Martha Bolton with Linda Hope
For five decades, comedian, actor, singer, dancer, and entertainer Bob Hope (1903-2003) traveled the world performing before American and Allied troops and putting on morale-boosting USO shows. Dear Bob . . . : Bob Hope’s Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.s of World War II tells the story of Hope’s remarkable service to the fighting men and women of World War II, collecting personal letters, postcards, packages, and more sent back and forth among Hope and the troops and their loved ones back home.
Soldiers, nurses, wives, and parents shared their innermost thoughts, swapped jokes, and commiserated with the “G.I.s’ best friend” about war, sacrifice, lonely days, and worrisome, silent nights. The Entertainer of the Century performed for millions of soldiers in person, in films, and over the radio. He visited them in the hospitals and became not just a pal but their link to home. This unforgettable collection of letters and images, many of which remained in Hope’s personal files throughout his life and now reside at the Library of Congress, capture a personal side of both writer and recipient in a very special and often-emotional way. This volume heralds the voices of those servicemen and women whom Hope entertained and who, it is clear, delighted and inspired him.
