Whitney Award Committee makes major changes to nomination rules
By Emily Debenham
In July 2019, the current Whitney Award Committee made major changes to nomination rules for the Mormon literary award. Starting this year, the time period that novels are eligible for nomination has changed. In a tweet dated July 6, the committee announced, “In 2019, the award eligibility dates are January 1-October 31. That means that the deadline for nominations for this year is October 31.”
Previously, awards were nominated to books published January 1 to December 31 in a given calendar year. This often made it hard for books published in December to have enough time to be nominated for awards. The change will now put 2019 October book releases in the same situation. Amy Wilson explained to me in an email, “We made this change because the awards program has grown so much that our judges needed more time to read the nominated books in time for everything else to happen for the awards to be presented at the Whitney Gala each May.”
Amy explains, “Starting in 2020, the award year for the Whitney Awards will begin on November 1 of the previous calendar year and end on October 31” The Nomination requirements for any work are fairly simple. The work must be authored by a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and receive five nominations from people who are not related to the author or have any monetary interest in the novel’s success. This means that indie-published books are considered alongside traditionally published works. There are many authors who receive multiple awards and nominations each year, but one of the fun things about the Whitney awards that new and little-known authors win, or are nominated frequently as well.
If you read any qualifying novel between January 1st and October 31st, 2019 and enjoyed it, please, nominate it for a Whitney Award.
[Editor’s note: The AML Awards will continue to use the January-December calendar year for its annual awards.]