Alive Communications Vice President Lee Hough has been named the recipient of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Christy Award for his contribution to the publishing industry as a literary agent. The special honor was announced Monday by Donna Kehoe, the organization’s executive director, and will be presented at the annual Christy Awards dinner Monday, June 24, at the International Christian Retail Show in St. Louis. Hough’s clients at Alive included Lynn Vincent, collaborator on the bestselling books Heaven Is for Real, Same Kind of Different As Me, and Going Rogue; Rich Stearns, president of World Vision and ECPA Christian Book of the Year award winner; as well as novelist Terri Blackstock and other notable authors. Hough has been battling a brain tumor; his last day at Alive Communications was Friday, June 14. He can be reached through his Caring Bridge Web site.
Eerdmans has had three titles selected by the editors of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research as among Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2012 for Mission Studies. The books include The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa edited by Patrick Harries and David Maxwell; Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African by Lamin Sanneh; and Light on Darkness? Missionary Photography of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by T. Jack Thompson. IBMR editors consulted with fifty distinguished scholars from around the world to compile the list, which was published in the April 2013 issue of the journal.
Baker Publishing Group has had four books named winners of Selah Awards on May 22 during the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. The winning books include Designed for Devotion by Dianne Neal Matthews in the Inspiration & Gift category; When You Need a Miracle by Linda Evans Shepherd in the Christian Life category; The Reunion by Dan Walsh in the Fiction: Contemporary category; and The Discovery by Dan Walsh in the Fiction: Historical category.
Thomas Nelson author and pastor Max Lucado has formed a partnership with Nelson, The Salvation Army, and CBA (the Association for Christian Retail) to produce a special Salvation Army edition of You’ll Get Through This: Hope and Help for Your Turbulent Times (Sept.) Through the “Give Hope Where It Counts” campaign, Christian retailers will sell the special mass-market edition for $5; the book will include an introductory letter and a 16-page insert featuring stories of people who have been helped by The Salvation Army. Lucado will be the featured speaker for a Salvation Army event on September 11, 2013, at the Centennial Memorial Temple in New York City; the event will also be simulcast to local churches and small groups throughout the U.S. and via The Salvation Army network. People directly affected by the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Sandy, and other tragedies will receive special invitations to the event.
B&H Publishing Group author Jen Hatmaker (7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess) appeared on NBC’s Today show June 10 after one of her blog posts went viral. The “Worst End of School Year Mom Ever” post struck a chord with parents: Today reported, “An army of moms has now applauded, shared on social media, and weighed in on her hilarious column,” which has received 350,000 shares on Facebook, 4,000 comments on Hatmaker’s blog, and a steady stream of re-tweets on Twitter.
Revell author Irene Hannon has won the HOLT Medallion Award in the Long Inspirational category for her 2012 romantic suspense novel Lethal Legacy, the final novel in Hannon's Guardians of Justice series. The HOLT Medallions are awarded by the Virginia Romance Writers. This is Hannon's second win--her novel From This Day Forward (Steeple Hill) won in the Short Inspirational category in 2008. Hannon is a two-time RITA Award winner and is nominated for the upcoming National Readers Choice award.
Baker Academic’s Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, edited by Marion Ann Taylor and Agnes Choi, has won a 2013 Word Award in the Academic category. The book also received an Honorable Mention for The Grace Irwin Prize, Canada’s largest literary prize for writers who are Christian. Brazos Press title Living into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distraction by Arthur Boers won in the Christian Living category of the Word Awards, which are sponsored by The World Guild, a national association for “connecting, developing, and promoting Canadian writers and editors who are Christian.”
