Grizzly Justice Annnounced as a Distinguished Favorite of the 2021 INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD.
Story Merchant Books is proud to announce Grizzly Justice by April Christofferson as a DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE in the "Western Fiction" category for the 2021 Independent Press Awards.
The INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD recognizes over 200 Book Award Winners and Distinguished Favorites in its annual book competition. The competition is judged by experts from different aspects of the book industry, including publishers, writers, editors, book cover designers and professional copywriters. Selected award winners and distinguished favorites are based on overall excellence.
In 2021, the INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD had entries worldwide. Participating authors and publishers reside in countries such as Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and others. In addition, books submitted included writers located in U.S. cities such as Atlanta to Santa Fe; Chicago to New York; from Boise to Honolulu, and others.
"We congratulate this year's 2021 winners and distinguished favorites in the annual INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD. The quality and quantity of excellent independently published books hit a record. Independents recognized are thriving around the globe. We are so proud to announce these key titles representing global independent publishing." said awards sponsor Gabrielle Olczak.
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April Christofferson Featured by The University of Utah’s School of Biological Sciences.
"I love the process of writing," April Christofferson, BS'73, says in a 2007 U profile, "but I write because I’m trying to make a difference."
The difference this Illinois native is talking about includes many of the most complex and conflicted issues of her adopted home in the American West, including wildlife and public lands management, tribal rights, and development. Most recently her passion as a writer has turned to the issue of more than 6,000 missing and endangered indigenous women in the country, many of them in the West.
This year, the reissue of the first two books of her Judge Annie Peacock Series, Alpha Female and Trapped, by Burns & Lea Books—along with its shopping of them by publisher/agent Story Merchant or a
for television miniseries based on the characters’ adventures in Yellowstone National Park and beyond—speak to the enduring interest of her literary creations, characterized by deep-dive storytelling that started more than a quarter-century ago.
Growing up in Chicago, Christofferson came to love the West during summers visiting Yellowstone and her grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming, where both parents had been raised, and later her paternal grandparents’ homes in Salt Lake City and Richmond, Utah. But the road she traveled to become a successful writer is a long and winding story in itself.
In many ways, it starts with Christofferson’s maternal grandfather, Floyd "Doc" Carroll, a rodeo champion and Wyoming state veterinarian who was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Hall of Great Westerners in 1998. He was a stunt double for the famous movie cowboy. "My grandpa was such an influence," says Christofferson. "I knew from when I was a little girl that I was going to live out West and be a vet."
After receiving her undergraduate degree in biology from the U, Christofferson began a veterinary medicine program at the University of Illinois in Champaign. But after her first year, she realized she truly wanted to be back West.