Edie Parsons has won the first Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award, an annual prize for “authors over the age of fifty who have not been traditionally published in the children’s literature field.”
Parsons is currently shopping a middle grade fantasy novel and lives in Athens, Georgia. You can read her work online. Here’s more about the award:
The grant was established by Newbery Award winner and Newbery Honor Book recipient Karen Cushman and her husband, Philip Cushman, in conjunction with the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Karen published her first children’s book, The Midwife’s Apprentice (winner of the 1996 Newbery Medal), at the age of fifty-three and has gone on to become one of the field’s most acclaimed novelists.
There is no direct application for this new award.
Interested authors must apply for Work-In-Progress Grant from SCBWI and indicate on the application that they are over 50. One winner will be picked from among these applications. The winner gets $500 in cash, and free tuition to one SCBWI conference.