Dr. Heather Sellers, winner of the Bronze 2022 Florida Book Award. (Photo courtesy of Heather Sellers)
The Florida Book Awards, coordinated by the Florida State University Libraries, announced winners for the nation’s most comprehensive state book awards program.
The program, established in 2006, celebrates the best of Florida literature.
Among the 2022 winners was Field Notes from the Flood Zone, authored by Heather Sellers, a professor in the USF College of Arts and Sciences Department of English.
Field Notes from the Flood Zone, which won in the poetry category, serves as a double love letter: to a beautiful and fragile landscape, and to the vulnerable young girl who grew up in that world.
"It is an elegy for the two great shaping forces in life, a heartbreaking family struggle and a collective lost treasure, our stunning, singular, desecrated Florida, and all its remnant beauty,” Sellers said.
The 17th annual competition featured 150 eligible publications submitted across 11 categories for books published in 2022. To be eligible, authors must be full-time Florida residents.
Winning authors from across the state were honored at the annual awards banquet on April 20, at Parkview at Cascades in Tallahassee.