First Novel Prize winner receives Gold IPPY Award

Susan TekulveCongratulations to Susan Tekulve and Hub City Press! Tekulve’s novel, In the Garden of Stone, has received a Gold IPPY Award as the best novel published in the South by an independent press in 2014. The novel also won the South Carolina First Novel Prize, as judged by Josephine Humphreys.

The annual Independent Publisher Book Awards are open to publishers worldwide who publish in the English language for the North American market. Tekulve’s award is Hub City Press’s 13th IPPY in the past 15 years, and its fifth gold award. An award ceremony will be held May 28 in New York City.

In the Garden of StoneThe book is a multi-generational story of Sicilian immigrants who come to the coal mines of West Virginia in the early 20th century. Harrowing and beautifully told, In the Garden of Stone is a haunting saga of endurance and redemption.

Tekulve’s nonfiction, short stories and essays have appeared in several journals, including Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, The Georgia Review, Connecticut Review, and Shenandoah. She is the author of two story collections, My Mother’s War Stories, which received the 2004 Winnow Press fiction prize, and Savage Pilgrims, (Serving House Books, 2009). Tekulve has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and teaches writing at Converse College.

Via: Hub City Press