BCALA and Lyrasis Announce the 2025 EBook Literary Awards Winners
The Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. (BCALA) and Lyrasis (previously BiblioLabs) announce the winners of the 2025 Self-Publishing EBook Awards. Following the model of the current BCALA Literary Awards, the awards honor the best self-published EBooks in fiction and poetry by an African American author in the U.S. This is the tenth time BCALA and Lyrasis have given this innovative award. The recipients will receive their awards during the American Library Association Conference in Philadelphia, PA in June 2025.
FICTION
The fiction category winner is Camp Lanier by Sylvester Barzey. After being caught shoplifting lip gloss, Taylor Johnson agrees to a summer work release program at Camp Lanier. Urban legends claim that the camp sits on a once-thriving all-Black town, violently displaced and cursed ever since. Taylor hopes to lay low and get through her sentence, but eerie things begin to unfold. There are whispers of past murders, other workers going missing, and hostility arises amongst friends she thought she could trust. Blending supernatural suspense and historical secrets, this horror novel explores survival and the cost of uncovering the truth. Barzey writes with a mission to change the horror genre so that children can see themselves as survivors.
POETRY
The poetry category winner is Black Body Radiation by Deb Forte. This is a collection of poems about African-American ancestral and present-day life. It is a call for renewed community and wellness. The author, Deb Forte, is an avid camper who found healing from racial pain in the loving embrace of the forest. Poems like DOTE!, CP Time and Black Museum are from a place as ancient, ethereal and eternal as the woodlands, where the pain of truths and the joy of gratitude peacefully coexist.
Members of the BCALA EBook Literary Awards Jury are: Tiffany A. Duck, LitDext LLC (Chair); Gladys Smiley Bell, Hampton University; Annie Payton, Eddie Hughes, Southern University; Brenda Spencer Robertson, University of North Texas at Dallas; Vanissa Ely, Southern University