In case you missed it, last month Independent Publisher [2] announced the winners of the 2009 “IPPY” Awards, honoring the year’s best independently published books. There were more than four thousand entries in eighty-five national and regional categories [3]. Here are a few of the recent winners:

Poetry: The Baseball Field at Night (Lost Horse Press [4]) by Patricia Goedicke [5] and or words to that effect (openDmusic) by Dave Tutin

Literary Fiction: Adam the King (Other Press [6]) by Jeffrey Lewis

Short Story Fiction: The Cult of Quick Repair (Coteau Books [7]) by Dede Crane

Essay/Creative Nonfiction: An Enemy of the People: The Unending Battle Against Conventional Wisdom (Doukathsan Press) by Lawrence R. Velvel

The annual awards are intended to bring increased recognition to books published in the past year by independent and university presses as well as self-published titles. The awards program was launched in 1996 and is open to all members of the independent publishing industry.