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Coal Dust and Dreams by CAL member M.J. Evans (Margi) is a first place winner in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, The Nautilus Book Awards, and the Chanticleer International Book Awards. (All in the middle-grade fiction category.) It was also awarded first in the Literary Global Children's Book awards for Historical Fiction.

Kathryn Winograd's photo and poetry book, This Visible Speaking: Catching Light Through The Camera’s Eye (The Humble Essayist Press), has been shortlisted for the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize, and awarded an Honorable Mention for the Art Book Category.

The Eric Hoffer Book Award is one of the top literary awards for independent books, involving over 2,500 books, 25 all-inclusive categories, and nearly 200 judges.

DV Chernov’s crime fiction series Nick Severs Mysteries was named a finalist in the Mystery and Suspense 2024 Book Series category of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs). The winners of the 16 fiction divisions and 7 non-fiction divisions were announced April 6 in Bellingham, WA. The Nick Severs Mysteries (Severed Echoes, 2002, and Cold Trace, 2024) is a Colorado-based detective series with more twists and turns than a Rocky Mountains highway, taking readers to the dark fringe where crime, psychology, and high-tech collide.

The Western Horse: A Popular History of the Wild and Working Animal, by Randi Samuelson-Brown, published by TwoDot, has been named a finalist in the Western Writers of America's SPUR Award for 2025. The award ceremony will be held in Amarillo in June 2025.
The Spur Awards has honored writers for distinguished writing about the American West annually since 1953. The Western Horse has also been featured in True West, COWGIRL, Western Living Magazines, and the Big Sky Journal.

Next Gen Indie Finalists include four CAL members. For cookbooks, Benjamin M. Weilert's, Stop Screaming. For general fiction over 100,000 words and historical fiction (pre-1900s), Falcon in the Dive by Leah Angstman. And for paranormal, Personal Demons by L.R. Braden.