The Book Industry Charitable Foundation has named five booksellers as winners of the Susan Kamil Emerging Writers Prize, which awards $10,000 to each recipient to provide the aspiring writer-booksellers with the financial support to focus on a full-length manuscript. This year's recipients are:
Toni Chappell, a former journalist and the owner of Fiction: A Novel Bookshop in Wiscasset, Maine. She is the author of two historical fiction works-in-progress. Her two daughters and a standard poodle named Peach are not-so-silent partners in the bookshop.
Erica Caldwell, who owned and operated a bookstore for eight years and has since worked at several bookstores in Western New York, including at Author's Note in Medina, N.Y., where she is buyer. Her submitted manuscript is a work of historical eco-fiction.
Daniel Isaiah Elder, a bookseller at Annie Bloom's Books in Portland, Ore. He is a recipient of an Emerging LGBTQ Writer Fellowship from Lambda Literary, as well as an Art/Lab Fellowship for Jewish artists. His essays and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines.
Nicole Yackley, a poet, bookseller, and artist from Georgia. Her work has been published in Belletrist magazine and Sixfold magazine, among others. A series of her poems were set to music by Mikeila McQueston and performed as a chamber piece for the 2019 Nief-Norf festival.
Amanda R. Toronto, the children's buyer at WORD Bookstores in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J. She is a former buyer and manager at the Shakespeare & Co. bookstores in New York City. Amanda serves on the board of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. Her manuscript is a work of literary fiction.
The award honors Kamil, who was executive v-p and publisher of Random House when she died in 2019. During her publishing career, spanning more than 40 years, she was known for recognizing new literary voices and introducing them to the public. The prize was established by reporter and author Charles Duhigg and his wife Liz Alter, a professor of biology at California State University Monterey Bay, and is administered by Binc.
"Congratulations to the winners of this incredibly generous prize and our sincere gratitude to the judges who committed countless hours to reviewing the applications, Charles and Liz, and all the talented finalists," said Binc CEO Pam French. "I look forward to following their careers."