The Book Awards at IPNE
Announces Its
2024 Award Winners

NONFICTION
Informational nonfiction

Gold
Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution
Marlene L. Daut / University of North Carolina Press

For immediate release
January 2025
The Book Awards at IPNE

On Saturday, January 18, The Book Awards at IPNE held its annual awards announcement
ceremony for the 2024 awards program.

With these awards it is our hope to benefit bookmakers and book readers alike. To help
beautifully crafted books find both new and intended audiences. To help readers find books
they will love. Publishing has opened up to authors, illustrators, designers, publishers in ways
that were never before possible, and that’s a good thing. But the marketplace noise has risen
to a fever pitch, and that’s the challenge.

We hope that awards programs such as these, firmly anchored, carefully wrought, will help
cut through some of that noise.

Process

Each of our books is assessed by three independent judges, meaning that books are not
competing with each other but against a standard of excellence for their category and genre.
Our judges take into account what the book sets out to do and then assess it based on how
well it accomplishes that goal. They first look at the total package: how professionally the
book itself presents, its “shelf appeal.” But they give the most weight to the substance of
the book and to the writing. What’s between the covers is what it’s all about.
Our standards are rigorous. Every win is a fine book.

Results

Because books entered in our program are judged against a standard, there is no set number
of gold, silver, and bronze winners assigned per category. Books that achieve the measure of
quality for a particular level are awarded that honor. If no books achieve that measure of
quality in a given year, no award is given for that particular level in that particular category.
This means that the awards given reflect the nature, as determined by our judges, of the top
books for each category