2016 Whitney Awards

Brandon Sanderson has won a pair of 2016 Whitney Awards, honoring the best fiction written each year by Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

Speculative Youth Fiction

  • Calamity by Brandon Sanderson

Other finalists: Sarah Beard, Janette Rallison, Dan Wells, and Julie Wright.

Speculative Fiction

  • The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson

Other finalists: Amy Harmon, Dan Wells, and Michalbrent Collings.)

It is the fourth year in a row Sanderson has won at least one of the awards.

The Whitney Awards were founded in 2007 by Robison Wells and named for Elder Orson F. Whitney, an early apostle in the LDS church, who prophesied: “We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” They are given to novels in the following categories:

  • General Fiction
  • Romance
  • Historical Romance
  • Mystery/Suspense
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Speculative Youth Fiction
  • General Youth Fiction
  • Middle Grade
  • Historical
  • Best Novel in Youth Fiction
  • and Best Novel by a New Author

Eligible novels receiving five or more nominations from the public are evaluated by a panel of genre judges. The five books in each category that get the highest ratings from the judges go onto the final ballot, and the members of the Awards Academy vote on the winners.

The Awards Academy consists of:

  • All eligible LDS authors
  • Eligible LDS publishing companies. For a company to be eligible, it must have published at least three LDS novels by at least two different authors during the awards year.
  • Other professionals in the industry, as determined by the Whitney Awards Committee.

[Thanks to David Doering for the story.]