Welcome

Welcome to the Independent Literary Awards home page.

Independent Literary Awards are given to books that have been recommended and voted on by independent literary bloggers. Nominations are open to all readers, and are then voted upon by a panel of bloggers who are proficient in the genre they represent. Each panel is led by a Director who oversees the integrity of the process.

More questions? See the About or FAQ pages. To see our past winners, please visit the WINNERS page.

(Please scroll down for the latest announcements regarding the awards). 

2011 Winners

After months of reading and discussing, our Directors and Voting Members have decided on the 2011 winners of the Independent Literary Awards! Congratulations to the winners — we will be contacting them soon for interviews, which we will feature on our Winners 2011 page as soon as they are completed.

2011 Indie Lit Award Winners

Biography/Memoir

Winner: Little Princes by Conor Grennan
Runner-Up: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

GLBTQ

Winner: Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender by Nick Krieger
Runner-Up: Huntress by Malinda Lo

Fiction

Winner: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
Runner-Up: Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney

Mystery

Winner: A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
Runner-Up: Fun and Games by Duane Swierczynski

Non-Fiction

Winner:  Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
Runner-Up: Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe

Poetry

Winner: Catalina by Laurie Soriano
Runner-Up: What Looks Like an Elephant by Edward Nudelman

Speculative Fiction

Winner: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Runner-Up: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

2011 Short Lists

We are excited to announce the 2011 Short Listed titles for the Independent Literary Awards! We are in the process of contacting publishers to seek review copies for our judges (if you are a publisher of one of these titles and would like to help us, please contact us at independent.literary.awards@gmail.com).

Our judges will be reading and discussing these titles over the next couple of months, and we will be presenting you with the winners and runners-up in Mid-March.

Biography/ Memoir

• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (Penguin)
• Bossypants by Tina Fey (Reagan Arthur Books)
• I Pray Hardest When Being Shot At by Kyle Garret (Hellgate Press)
• Little Princes by Conor Grennan (William Morrow)
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch (Harper)

GLBTQ

• Well With My Soul by Gregory Allen (ASD Publishing)
• Swimming to Chicago by David Matthew Barnes (Bold Strokes Books)
• Songs for the New Depression by Kergan Edwards-Stout (Circumspect Press)
• Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender by Nick Krieger (Beacon Press)
• Huntress by Melinda Lo (little brown books for young readers)

Fiction

• Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney (Syracuse University Press)
• Cross Currents by John Shors (Penguin Group: NAL Trade)
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Knopf/Doubleday Publishing Group)
• Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
• The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene (Penguin Group)

Mystery

• Missing Daughter, Shattered Family by Liz Strange (MLR Press)
• The Cut by George Pelecanos (Reagan Arthur/LIttle, Brown)
• A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey (Dutton)
• Fun & Games by Duane Swierczynski (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown)

Non-Fiction

• Berlin 1961 by Frederick Kempe (Putnam Adult)
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (Crown)
• Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (Harper)
• Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku (Doubleday)
• The Social Animal by David Brooks (Random House)

Poetry

• Beyond Scent of Sorrow by Sweta Vikram (Modern History Press)
• Catalina by Laurie Soriano  (Lummox Press)
• What Looks Like an Elephant by Edward Nudelman  (Lummox Press)
• Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems by Ramos, Emma Eden  (Heavy Hands Ink)
• Sonics in Warholia by Megan Volpert (Sibling Rivalry Press)

Speculative Fiction

• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Candlewick)
• The Magician King by Lev Grossman (Viking)
• 11/22/1963 by Stephen King (Scribner)
• Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor Books)
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Crown)

1/1/12

Happy New Year all! We want to thank everyone who took the time to nominate this year. Nominations are now officially closed, and the teams will be working to put together the Short Lists. We plan to announce them by (or during) the second week of January.

Without all your support and nominations, these awards would not be happening. We are so happy that the readers’ voices will be heard again this year and that new talent will be rewarded for their work!

9/2/11

Unfortunately e-books are not eligible to be nominated for the following reasons:

• Not all e-books are available to read on all e-readers (or without accounts on certain book selling websites).
• At this time we can not afford to supply all of our judges with e-readers and all of the judges must read a title that has made the short list in order to judge it.

Thank you for understanding! Please do not nominate e-book titles; they will not be counted. 

9/1/11 & Previous Updates

09/01/11:

Nominations are now open!! Visit the Genres tab, located at the top of this page and select the genre you’re interested in. Nominations forms are at the bottom of each genre page.

All readers not just book bloggers, are eligible to nominate books for this year’s Indie Lit Awards!

Friendly reminder: if you worked on a title (author, publisher, editor, publicist, etc.) you may not nominate that title.

5/10/11:

EXCITING NEWS! All readers not just book bloggers, will be eligible to nominate books for this year’s Indie Lit Awards! So, start writing down your favorite titles of 2011 for each genre that you read. We’re looking forward to your nominations in September.

Friendly reminder: if you worked on a title (author, publisher, editor, publicist, etc.) you may not nominate that title.

5/2/11:

Are you a blogger who is willing to review books in your favorite genre that are newly released in 2011? Are you a publisher, publicist, or author who is looking to get your newly released (in 2011) book read and reviewed on blogs? Great (on both accounts)! We’ve added Mr. Linky lists to each genre page to enable book bloggers to add their blogs to the list of bloggers who are willing to accept books published in 2011 and review them. Publishers, publicists, and authors: we’ve tried to make it easier for you to find bloggers who review books in your specific categories. Our goals are the same as yours — get books published in 2011 seen by readers! We want as many nominations this year as we can get, and the only way to do that is if readers know which books are out. Sometimes that can be difficult, especially if a blogger is new or if they just don’t have established relationships with literary industry people. So, let’s rectify that and get great books into blogging hands! Please visit our genre pages today to either add your blog, or visit blogs in particular genres.

As always, you can leave questions for us here in the comments section, or contact Wallace, Ti, or a genre Director for more information. (Our information is on the Directors and Voting Members page — in the menu on the header).

3/23/11:

2011 ILAs are under way. New genres and teams have been announced. 2011 Badges are available (grab one for your site if you want to support the ILAs). How to help? Visit ourFAQ section. Nominations open September 1st.

2/4/11:

The 2010 Indie Lit Award Winners have been announced! Congratulations to all of the Winners and Runners Up. Your book was nominated by, read by, deliberated upon, and voted on by book bloggers. We are so pleased to announce the winners. Happy reading to all of you who haven’t gotten a chance to read these titles! And thank you to all of you who nominated.

2/1/11:

This Friday, the winner for the 2010 Independent Literary Awards will be announced! Shortly after we will be featuring interviews with each winning author who agrees to grant us one. Stay tuned!

Up Next:
Obviously, 2011 is already under way. Shortly after the 2010 winners are announced, last year’s nominations will be cleared and the nominating process will be open again. And, by March, the judges and panelists for 2011 will be chosen and announced! If you would like the opportunity to be a judge or panelist (or would like to be a judge or panelist for a genre not yet represented), please leave a comment in the Judges and Panelists section of this site and you will be added to the list of prospects.