Two 3RP Titles Named 2022 Foreword INDIES Winners
AQUARIAN DAWN Earns 2022 Foreword INDIES Gold Medal for Best Young Adult Fiction; YIPPIE GIRL Nets Honorable Mention
NEW YORK—Today, Three Rooms Press is thrilled to announce that AQUARIAN DAWN by Nigerian-born debut author Ebele Chizea (978-1-953103-25-3, 300 pages, Trade Paper, $15, 2022, Three Rooms Press) has been awarded the Gold Medal in Young Adult Fiction in the 25th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.
More than 2500 individual titles across 55 genres were submitted for consideration, and the Young Adult category is particularly competitive. The Gold Medal award is the highest honor in the Foreword INDIES category.
Three Rooms Press co-directors Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges were particularly thrilled by this award. “When I first read AQUARIAN DAWN, I was struck by the stunning way the story of its young female protagonist unfolds, moving from rebellious teen years to a place of joy, without ever losing sight of her personal values.” Adds Kat, “The Foreword INDIES Gold Medal is such a huge honor. And to know that it was given to author Ebele Chizea for her brilliant debut novel is such a thrill, giving her voice and her storytelling skills the recognition they truly deserve.”
In addition, the critically-acclaimed memoir YIPPIE GIRL: Exploits in Protest and Defeating the FBI by Judy Gumbo(978-1-953103-18-5, 360 pages, Trade Paper, $18, 2022, Three Rooms Press) received Honorable Mention in another competitive category, Autobiography/ Memoir. Gumbo was one of the very few female members of the original Yippies, an anti-war satirical protest group most noted for its involvement in the 1968 trial of the Chicago 7. “YIPPIE GIRL is well-deserving of this high honor,” says Kat. “Judy Gumbo’s writing is honest and fierce, and uncovers a trove of new details about illegal FBI surveillance of the period, while also showing the conflict within the Yippies organization, especially in terms of giving women an equal voice.”
As part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers, Foreword Magazine hosts an annual awards program each year. Finalists represent the best books published in 2022. After more than 2,500 individual titles spread across 55 genres were submitted for consideration, the Finalists were determined by Foreword’s editorial team. Winners were decided by an expert team of booksellers and librarians—representing Foreword’s trade readership—from across the country.
Three Rooms Press is a fiercely independent New York-based publisher inspired by diversity, dada, punk, and passion. Founded in 1994 by editors Peter Carlaftes and Kat Georges, Three Rooms Press serves as a leading independent publisher of diverse, cut-the-edge creative, including fiction, memoir, biography, young adult, LGBTQ fiction and nonfiction, and fiction and nonfiction by underrepresented voices in the literary world.
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