NORTHAMPTON, Mass., Feb. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Winning Writers is pleased to announce the results from its tenth annual North Street Book Prize. This contest recognizes the best books being self-published or hybrid-published today. 1,930 books were received from around the world.

Dr. Linda I. Meyers of New York, New York won this year’s Grand Prize across all genres for The Tell, a literary memoir-in-essays that is both a New York Jewish family saga and the story of a feminist awakening. Catalyzed by her mother’s suicide, the author left a stifling marriage, began college, shepherded her three young sons through a show business career that included co-starring with Woody Allen in Annie Hall, and became a psychologist and psychoanalyst. Dr. Meyers received $10,000, a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $500 credit at BookBaby, three months of Plus service (a $207 value) and a $250 account credit from Book Award Pro, a book cover consultation from Laura Duffy Design (a $1,100 value), and 3 free ads in the Winning Writers newsletter (a $525 value).

• Jeff Shelton of Santa Barbara, California won First Prize in the Art Book category for The Fig District: Some Buildings in Downtown Santa Barbara, a compendium of colorful patterns, photographs, and blueprints from eight whimsical multi-use buildings that his architecture firm designed in a historic California neighborhood.
• Trevor Ostfeld of Tenafly, New Jersey and Iryna Chernyak of Warsaw, Poland won First Prize in Children’s Picture Book for their co-authored story Finding Messi: The Miracle Cat from Kyiv, which re-creates the true story of Iryna’s reunion with her cat after her family fled from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• Bryan Wiggins of Cape Elizabeth, Maine won First Prize in Genre Fiction for his medical thriller The Corpse Bloom. Written with expert consultation from neurosurgeon Dr. Lee Thibodeau, this novel plunges a Boston transplant surgeon into high-stakes ethical dilemmas involving colonialism, unequal access to healthcare, and murder in rural Mexico.
• Sven Siekmann of Sonoma, California won First Prize in Graphic Novel & Memoir for Time Zones, which dramatizes his family’s attempted escape from East Germany in 1978, his parents’ capture and imprisonment, and their reunion several years later in West Germany.
• Michael Demaray of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania won First Prize in Mainstream/Literary Fiction for The Faller, a stark but redemptive coming-of-age novella about an orphaned 12-year-old boy in a rural logging community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
• Rob Mermin of Montpelier, Vermont won First Prize in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir for Circle of Sawdust: A Circus Memoir of Mud, Myth, Mirth, Mayhem, and Magic, a rollicking six-decade journey from his early life as a European circus clown through his founding of Circus Smirkus, a youth circus based in Vermont.
• Angelino Donnachaidh of Osaka, Japan won First Prize in Middle Grade for Tamiu: A Cat’s Tale, a wise and winsome fable about a young wildcat at the dawn of human civilization who visits different animal societies to see how they balance freedom with security.
• Stephen C. Pollock of Mebane, North Carolina won First Prize in Poetry for Exits, an elegant poetry collection about mortality, with a supple formal inventiveness and wordplay.

The category winners each received $1,000, a marketing analysis and one-hour phone consultation with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a $500 credit at BookBaby, three months of Plus service from Book Award Pro (a $207 value), design for a custom merchandise item based on the winner’s book cover from Laura Duffy Design, and one free ad in the Winning Writers newsletter (a $175 value); the winning children’s picture book author also received a phone consultation from April Cox at Self-Publishing Made Simple (a $289 value) and access to Authorpreneur Summit sessions (an $89 value).

Ten Honorable Mentions of $300 and three months of Plus service from Book Award Pro (a $207 value) each went to Mindy Blumenfeld & Marc Lumer, Leah Campbell, Dr. Mary Jumbelic, Aiden Woosol Lee, Michelle Mae, Jessica McCann, Jeremy Sherr, Beth SKMorris, Jessica H. Stone, and Irene Young.

These finalists are also recognized. They each received a free private critique from Winning Writers, a $90–$240 value: Sherry Roseberry, Shari Schwert, Joel Shoemaker, Blas Telleria, D.C. Emerson, Esteban Guillermo Zanetti, Bonnie Bley, Sarah Hickner, Carla Solomon, Charles B. Warren, River 瑩瑩 Dandelion, Rick Lupert, Nita Penfold, and Phlaurel Nen.

The judges’ remarks and excerpts from the winning entries are published at winningwriters.com. $21,000 was awarded in all, making this one of the world’s most generous contests for self-published and hybrid-published books. This contest is distinguished by its relatively low entry fee compared to the prizes awarded, the substantial benefits provided by the co-sponsors, the feedback provided for all entries submitted online, and its clear-eyed public critiques of winning entries, unafraid to suggest where a great book could have been even better.

The eleventh North Street competition opens today with a deadline of July 1, 2025. The entry fee is $85 per book. All entrants will receive free gifts from the contest’s co-sponsors—Carolyn Howard-Johnson, BookBaby, Atmosphere Press, Gatekeeper Press, Book Award Pro, Laura Duffy Design, and Self-Publishing Made Simple.

Founded in 2001, Winning Writers is a partner member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. In addition to the North Street Book Prize, Winning Writers also sponsors the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest, the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest, and the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest (no fee). All of these contests are recommended by Reedsy. Winning Writers has also been named one of the “101 Best Websites for Writers” (Writer’s Digest, 2024).

Contact:
Adam Cohen
[email protected]
413-320-1847

SOURCE Winning Writers