Christy Awards

In the spring of 1999, nearly a dozen Christian publishers confirmed the need for establishing a Christian fiction award to recognize novelists and novels of excellence in several genres of Christian fiction. By late summer, ideas and planning had come together to launch The Christy Award, named in honor of Catherine Marshall’s novel and of her contribution to growth of the fiction Christians love to read.

The Christy Award is designed to:

Nurture and encourage creativity and quality in the writing and publishing of fiction written from a Christian worldview.
Bring a new awareness of the breadth and depth of fiction choices available, helping to broaden the readership.
Provide opportunity to recognize novelists whose work may not have reached bestseller status.
How the Awards Work
Every year publishers are invited to submit novels written from a Christian worldview and copyrighted in the year preceding the awards. Each novel is entered in one of several genre categories and/or the first novel category. Each category of novels is then read and evaluated against a ten-point criteria by a panel of seven judges composed of librarians, reviewers, academicians, literary critics, and other qualified readers, none of whom have a direct affiliation with a publishing company.