Boaz Publishing Offers $10,000 for Unpublished Novels

by Edward Nawotka, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 1/26/2007

Boaz Publishing, a tiny literary publisher in Albany, Calif., has created a new $10,000 award for unpublished novels. The Frances Fabri Literary Prize for Fiction honors the memory of holocaust survivor Frances Fabri, an unpublished poet and fiction writer who spent much of her later years recording oral histories of fellow survivors. Boaz publisher Tom Southern said he sees the prize as an ideal way for agents to find an outlet for "those books that they believed in, but just haven't made it into print yet."

In addition to the cash award and hardcover publication by Boaz, the endowment for the prize includes $5,000 for marketing. Southern said that the prize is being funded by investments from anonymous donors. The funds are sufficient for Boaz to plan a second book prize—most likely also for unpublished fiction—sometime later this year.

Boaz is a side project for Southern, who is the COO of Palace Press International, a publisher of glossy coffee-table books. Boaz, which was founded in 1996, has published just eight books, many from Texas writers, including Jesse Sublett's memoir of his girlfriend's murder, Never the Same Again, which appeared in 2004 and was the last book published by Boaz. Southern said he expects Boaz to publish "opportunistically" in the future. Distribution is through New Harbinger Publications.

The deadline for the first Frances Fabri Prize is February 28. The winner will be announced April 15. Submission details can be found online at www.boazpublishing.com.

This article originally appeared in the January 26, 2007 issue of PW Daily. For more information about PW Daily, including a sample and subscription information, click here »

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