To say that book award season has been good to Chained Birds is an understatement!
I’m humbled and honored that Chained Birds has been chosen as the 2025 Gold/1st Place winner by the Feathered Quill Book Awards Program for the Debut Author category. At the time of this blog post, the finalists for this award and their other award categories haven’t even been announced. All I know is there were over 200 award entries, and the book awards editor offered me a hearty congratulations for rising “to the top of that huge stack of nominations!” I was also told there was no need for me to wait to announce the prize. Feathered Quill will be posting about all of its winners and finalists in the coming days.
Winning book awards never gets old, and I am, once again, misty-eyed over this recognition of my work. And the farther into book award season we get, the less I am apt to believe that any of my prizes are a fluke.
To recap, since the book’s November 12, 2024 launch:
- On 11/24/24 Chained Birds was named a finalist for the 2024 Best Thriller book from BestThrillers.com, giving me my first official placement on an end-of-year book list. BestThrillers also recognized me as one of four “notable debut authors” on their 2024 list of best thrillers.
- On 12/4/24 Chained Birds landed on Independent Book Review’s list of “The Best Books We Read in 2024.”
- On 12/6/24 Chained Birds was named a December 2024 Silver Book Award winner.
- On 1/16/25 Chained Birds was short-listed for the 2024 Nellie Bly Awards for Journalistic Non-Fiction by the Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (CIBAs). **The grand prize winner and 1st Place winners in this and other CIBA book categories will be announced at the awards ceremony in April.**
- On 2/1/25 Chained Birds won the Feathered Quill 2025 Gold/1st Place award for Debut Author
This Feathered Quill award dovetails with the BestThrillers recognition of me as one of their four notable debut authors from last year. If I didn’t know better, I might suspect a pattern 🤷♀️ There are plenty of more award programs I’ve entered that have yet to name short-lists, finalists, and winners, and I’m hopeful I can add to my sticker collection 🏅🌟 🏆 😁
I’ll post award updates if any others roll in, and at some point, I’ll write a comprehensive blog post about my experience entering book awards. I’ve seen similar posts by other authors, and I’d love to contribute to the topic. Stay tuned 😊
Carla Conti is a true crime journalist, storyteller, and prison reform advocate. Her debut book, Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir of Justice, Survival and Redemption Behind Bars, is out now with WildBlue Press.
