Caroline Kurtz received the Best First Book from the Presbyterian Writers Guild for her memoir A Road Called Down on Both Sides: Growing up in Ethiopia and America.

Caroline Kurtz, a missionary kid who from age 5 grew up in Ethiopia with her parents and siblings, has been named winner of the Presbyterian Writers Guild’s biennial Best First Book Award for the best first book by a Presbyterian author written during 2018-19. The Best First Book Award is co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation and comes with a $500 cash prize. Her sister, Jane Kurtz, was also awarded the Distinguished Writer award for 2020.

Learn more at Kurtz sisters say Presbyterian Writers Guild awards are ‘extra special.’

Don Colburn received the Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Chapbook Award for won chapbook contest.

The Cathy Smith Bowers Award goes to the winner of a national competition for best poetry chapbook manuscript, chosen by the final judge, Cathy Smith Bowers, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina. The winner receives $1,000 and publication of the book by Main Street Rag publishing company. My chapbook, Mortality with Pronoun Shifts, is due to be released in March 2019. For more info, go to Main Street Rag Bookstore and click on Coming Soon.