Contest season: The Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction

Looks like I’ve got a shot in at least one more contest, the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction, in which “Step It Up and Go” is one of 10 finalists for the 2020-21 entry year.

Established in 2003 as successor to two earlier awards (the Mayflower Cup and Patterson Cup), the Ragan award is named for poet, critic and publisher Sam Ragan, who was also the first secretary of the North Carolina Department of Natural and cultural Resources. The award is overseen and presented by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association; and if it’s on the same schedule as past years, the winner should be announced in November.

(UPDATE/JANUARY 2022: And the winner of the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction is Gregory S. Taylor’s “Central Prison: A History of North Carolina’s State Penitentiary.” Congratulations to him, and to all my fellow nominees.)

At this point, though, I’m just glad to be in the field at all, alongside some very worthy books and authors, because it feels like I’m playing with house money. “Step It Up and Go” has already won the North Caroliniana Society Book Award for “the book that captures the essence of North Carolina by contributing powerfully to an understanding of the state,” and was also First Runner-Up in the Eric Hoffer Awards’ “Culture” category.

North Caroliniana Society award-winner

I am honored and thrilled to announce that “Step It Up and Go” has picked up another very nice accolade — the annual book award from the North Caroliniana Society, a group that is “Dedicated to the Promotion and Increased Knowledge and Appreciation of North Carolina’s Heritage.”

The North Caroliniana Society Book Award recognizes “the book that captures the essence of North Carolina by contributing powerfully to an understanding of the state.” It is also to be one that “makes a positive contribution and appears to have the best chance of standing the test of time as a classic volume of North Caroliniana.”

This award was established in 2003 and comes with an engraved silver cup, to be presented in a ceremony on Oct. 6. Notable past winners include the 2004 historical memoir “Blood Done Sign My Name” by historian Timothy B. Tyson, and 2014’s “Talkin’ Tar Heel: How Our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina.”

In another first for me, this makes makes two awards that “Step It Up and Go” has won. Last month, it was First Runner-Up in the “Culture” category of the Eric Hoffer Awards.

Hoffer Awards: Thank you

As I’ve noted elsewhere, writers and journalists are funny about contests and awards. We go out of our way to pretend they don’t matter, and that we don’t care. But you don’t have to scratch too far below the surface to find that we’re just like anyone else when it comes to things like this: Whether or not it means anything, and whether or not we’ll admit it, we all think winning stuff is fun.

And so I am honored and excited to report that “Step It Up and Go” has picked up a little figurative hardware in the 2021 Eric Hoffer Awards, given out for “Excellence in Independent Publishing.” My book came in at First Runner-Up in the Hoffer’s “Culture” category, right behind the winning 2021 entrant “The Doctor Who Fooled the World” by Brian Deer (John Hopkins University Press). “Step It Up and Go” also made this year’s Hoffer Grand Prize Short List. The judge’s note in The US Review of Books reads:

Started in 2000, the Hoffer Awards are in memory of the late American philosopher and author Eric Hoffer. Their stated mission is “to honor freethinking writers and independent books of exceptional merit” published on small, academic and independent presses. This is the second time I’ve won a Hoffer Award, after a culture-category “Honorable Mention” for 2012’s “Ryan Adams: Losering, A Story of Whiskeytown.” But First Runner-Up is a step higher than Honorable Mention, so maybe I’ll get to the top someday!

Something to hang on the wall…

In today’s mail at home, a little something from the postman in the wake of Monday’s announcement about the Hoffer Awards. I like it!

Hoffer Awards love for “Losering”

Well, here’s a nice little feather for the cap. I am pleased to note that “Losering” has placed in the Eric Hoffer Awards For Independent Books, an annual competition established in the memory of the late writer/philosopher Eric Hoffer “to honor freethinking writers and independent books of exceptional merit.”

To that end, “Losering” has picked up an “Honorable Mention” notice in the Hoffer’s “Culture” category; and since it’s the first Honorable Mention listed, I’ll just call that a bronze medal. Podium, here I come! Yee haw!! Below is the award summation, as detailed in The US Review of Books: