Orcas’ Nautilus Book Awards Accepting Entries through February 25

Authors, editors and publishers whose writing promotes spiritual growth, conscious living and positive social change may submit their work for the Nautilus Book Awards’ competition through Friday, Feb. 25, announced Nautilus Award Founder Marilyn McGuire.

The Nautilus Book Awards recognize print books, audio “books” and e-books that meet the above criteria and “at the same time… stimulate the imagination and offer the reader new possibilities for a better life and a better world.” (www.nautilusbookawards.com)

Gold and Silver awards are given to those entries that “make a literary and heartfelt contribution to the fields of high-level wellness, green values, responsible leadership, as well as to the worlds of art, creativity and inspiration,” says McGuire.

Hands at Work won the Honorary Nautilus Small Press Award in 2010

Last year, the Honorary Small Press Award was awarded to Hands at Work:Portraits and Profiles of People Who Work with Their Hands, by Lopez Islanders Iris Graville, with photography by Summer Moon Scriver, and published by Heron Moon Press.

This is the 11^th year of the Nautilus Awards, which are judged in a three-tier process that has attracted the attention and respect of many long-established “name” publishers. Prize winning books are featured at the annual publishing event, Book Expo America, which will be held in midtown Manhattan at the Jacob Javits Center this May.

This year, in addition to 28 adult categories, five children/young adult categories and audible “books,” Nautilus Awards will also honor e-books (in adult fiction and non-fiction categories only).

“The face of publishing has changed so tremendously with digital technology,” says McGuire. “It’s a fabulously popular way for people to publish books quickly and inexpensively. However, it’s kind of helter-skelter, there’s not a lot of standards in place with e-books.” McGuire first came to Orcas Island 25 years ago for a publishing project. She started the trade organization, “New Alternatives for Publishers, Retailers and Artists” (NAPRA), which published a bi-monthly magazine out of Eastsound Square’s upper stories for a number of years, publishing mostly book reviews.

Through the trade organization, and NAPRA’s influence at international book trade shows such as “Book Expo America,” McGuire could attract publishers of the body-mind-spirit “niche.”

In 2003, she closed the NAPRA office doors, but since reviewing books had been the primary focus of the magazine, and certain books “were stellar,” in McGuire’s words, she then decided to launch the Nautilus Book Awards, named after the image in the Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “The Chambered Nautilus,” which reads in part:

“Build thee more stately mansions
O my soul
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!”

Nautilus Book Awards now occupies a corner office in the OPAL building at the corner of Enchanted Forest Road and Lovers Lane. McGuire engages some three dozen “readers” – over half of whom live on Orcas Island – to evaluate the entries, looking for “extraordinary literary and heartfelt contributions to spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, green values, responsible leadership and positive social change as well as to the worlds of art, creativity and inspirational reading for children, teens and young adults,” she says. “Authors and publishers and their books CAN and ARE making a difference.”

The readers participate in a workshop before the months-log process and come together for a celebration — and lots of book talk — at the end of the reading process.

Print, Audio, and E-Books in English that are copyrighted or published in 2009 and 2010 (and that have an ISBN number) are eligible for entry in the 2011 Nautilus Awards. Categories range from “Aging Gracefully” through “Memoir” to “Writing/Creative Process.” Five categories in Children/Young Adult books, and audio books, are also considered in the Nautilus Awards. (E-Books are accepted in adult fiction and nonfiction categories only.)

For questions, go to www.nautilusbookawards.com or contact marilyn@nautilusbookawards.com