The Whitney Awards are awards given annually for novels by LDS authors. Established in 2007, they are named after Orson F. Whitney, a prominent early member of the LDS Church. There are several categories for which novels may be nominated. The Whitney Awards are a semi-independent non-profit organization affiliated with the LDStorymakers, a guild for LDS authors.
Contents
Categories
Due to the limited number of titles released by LDS authors, several of the genre awards have been combined (such as romance and women's fiction).
There are currently eight genre categories:
There are also two special awards:
While the Whitney Committee has said that they hope to expand the number of genres in the future, they likely won't venture into other areas of LDS art, such as music, poetry, or non-fiction books.
Process
To be eligible, a novel must be written by an LDS author during the award year, and be at least 50,000 words long. Any reader can nominate a book. Once a book has received five or more nominations, it becomes an official nominee. The official nominees are presented to the Whitney Awards Committee which checks for eligibility and acts as a preliminary judging panel, reducing the number of nominees to no more than five per category.
Finally, ballots are sent to the Whitney Awards Academy, an invitation-only group consisting of authors, bookstore owners/managers, distributors, critics, and other industry professionals. By a popular vote, they decide on the winners. The awards are presented at a dinner held at the conclusion of the annual LDStorymakers conference and writing "boot camp."
Until the 2010 awards (presented 2011), books were not allowed to win in more than one category.
Name
The awards are named after Orson F. Whitney, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as a poet and writer. In 1888, Elder Whitney delivered a speech entitled "Home Literature" in which he stated:
We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God's ammunition is not exhausted. His brightest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God's name and by his help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundations may now be low in earth.
The phrase "We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own" has been adopted as the slogan of the Whitney Awards, and is printed on the trophy.
Committee
The Whitney Awards Committee acts as both the organizers and the preliminary judges of the Whitney Awards. Rules stipulate that the committee be made up of at least four members of LDStorymakers. Their positions are temporary, by invitation of the Whitney Awards Committee president (who is appointed by the LDStorymakers executive committee).
The 2011 committee included:
The 2009 committee included:
The 2015 committee were:
Although Kerry Blair had been a member of the Whitney Awards Committee for two years, the other members of the committee "went behind her back" to name her the winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008.
Criticism
One Mormon literature critic initially raised concerns with the heavy involvement of authors published by Covenant Communications in the awards process. However, when the finalists for 2007 were announced, this same commenter noted both that there was a wide spectrum of publishers represented, and that "Covenant publishes the lion’s share of Mormon market fiction." This same critic later described the awards as "at best a reductive form of validation and criticism. Although let’s be honest: The Whitneys have way more credibility than the Grammys."
After the 2011 nominations, criticism of the nomination process was common, though appreciation of the Whitney Awards themselves was also common.