AFS Longlisted for ABNA

A Father’s Son has been longlisted for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). The award, which is kind of a big deal for the obvious reasons, also comes with a $50,000 grand prize purse and four second-prize purses worth $15,000 each. Cha-ching.

A short list will be announced next month, with all of these stories getting space in an upcoming edition of Publishers Weekly to publish the novel’s 300-word blurb. That’s also kind of a hot issue.

Final winners are expected to be announced in July.

I have also submitted A Father’s Son for The Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Book Award, but they don’t announce their respective winners until the autumn.

You might be wondering why I included a picture of the NHL’s Calder Trophy with this post, but I think of the ABNA as the NHL Rookie of the Year Award (I might sort of like hockey.) If that’s the case, I’ll nominate the following award correlations for all future fiction writers/hockey lovers:

Stanley Cup & Conn Smythe Award: Booker Prize

Hart Trophy: Giller Prize, Pulitzer Prize

Art Ross Trophy: Governor General’s Award, Pen/Faulkner Award

Norris Trophy: Commonwealth Book Prize

Vezina Trophy: Orange Award

NHL Foundation Player Award: Nobel Prize in Literature

Lady Byng Trophy: all other fiction awards (this makes more sense if you know what this trophy symbolizes)