This is our year to return in-person together to celebrate and honor the best Christian fiction of the year.
The Christy Award® Gala Dinner will be held outside Chicago on November 14th and will feature a premiere cast of the industry’s authors to announce The Christy Award winners in nine categories, The Christy Book of the Year®, and The Amplify Award for Christian Fiction presented by last year’s winning authors including Sharon Hinck, Amanda Barratt, Sara Brunsvold, Laura Frantz, Elizabeth Goddard, Kristi Ann Hunter, Anna Rose Johnson,Linda MacKillop, Katie Powner, and Sara Watterson.
Woven throughout the special evening hosted by radio personality and award winning novelist Chris Fabry, will be reflections about the Christian imagination and the impact of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction, with many special guests including poet, scholar, and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite (via pre-recorded segment).
EVENING HOST
Chris Fabry is an award-winning author of more than 80 books, including Saving Grayson and his latest, The Forge, based on the film by the Kendrick Brothers. He’s the winner of the Carol Award and five Christy Awards, and was inducted into the Christy Award Hall of Fame. Chris is also the host of Chris Fabry Live on Moody Radio.
AUTHOR OF THE 2023 CHRISTY BOOK OF THE YEAR
Amanda Barratt is the bestselling author of numerous historical novels and novellas, including The Warsaw Sisters, Within These Walls of Sorrow, and The White Rose Resists. She is the recipient of multiple Christy Awards as well as the Carol Award. Her novel, Within These Walls of Sorrow, won the 2023 Christy Award Book of the Year. Amanda is passionate about illuminating oft-forgotten facets of history through a fictional narrative. She lives in Michigan.
CHRISTY HALL OF FAME 2024 INDUCTEE
Award-winning author Sharon Hinck writes “stories for the hero in all of us,” about ordinary people on extraordinary faith journeys. She has been honored with four Carol Awards and four Christy Awards for her novels, and also has written for a variety of devotion books. She has experience as a church youth worker, a choreographer and ballet teacher, a church organist, and an adjunct professor for Creative Writing MFA students. One day she’ll figure out what to be when she grows up, but meanwhile she’s pouring her imagination into writing. When she isn’t wrestling with words, Sharon enjoys speaking for conferences, retreats, and church groups.
Poet-Priest Malcolm Guite was Chaplain for 20 years at Girton College, Cambridge and remains Supernumerary Fellow. He lectures widely in England and North America on Theology and Literature and has published poetry, theology, and literary criticism and has worked as a librettist. His books include Sounding the Seasons; Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Canterbury 2012) and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder and IVP 2017). Malcolm has a particular interest in the imagination as a truth-bearing faculty and continues to reflect deeply on how poetry can stimulate and re-awaken our prayer life. He writes Poet’s Corner, a weekly column for the Church Times. In 2023 Malcolm was awarded the Archbishop Lanfranc Medal for Education and Scholarship by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Malcolm enjoys sailing, walking, old books, live music and all the varieties of the British countryside and weather. He has a YouTube series called ‘A Spell in the Library’ at https://www.youtube.com/c/MalcolmGuitespell www.malcolmguite.com
Lynn Austin has sold more than one and a half million copies of her books worldwide. She has won eight Christy Awards for her historical fiction and was one of the first inductees into the Christy Award Hall of Fame. One of her novels, "Hidden Places," was made into a Hallmark Channel Original Movie, starring actress Shirley Jones. Lynn and her husband have three grown children and make their home in western Michigan.
Jamie Lapeyrolerie is an editor for WaterBrook & Multnomah, imprints of Penguin Random House and a writer. Her own writings have appeared in Christianity Today, Christ + Pop Culture, and Ekstasis Magazine and on her site, musingsofjamie.com. She also runs a site dedicated to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, writing about their works, their influence, and the inspiration they continue to bring to millions around the world. Jamie founded International Inklings Day in 2015, which celebrates the day Lewis and Tolkien met (May 11, 1926) that started a decades long friendship and produced the works we love, including The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. You can read more about Jamie’s Tolkien writings at internationalinklingsday.com and on Instagram @musingsofjamie.
Steve Laube, a literary agent and president of The Steve Laube Agency, has been in the book industry for over four decades, first as a bookstore manager where he was awarded the National Store of the Year by CBA. He then spent many years with Bethany House Publishers where he was named Editor of the Year by AWSA. Over twenty years ago he became an agent where he and his agency have represented over 2,500 new books and been twice named Agent of the Year by ACFW. A long time stalwart advocate of speculative fiction in Christian publishing, he is now the Publisher of Enclave Publishing. He was also inducted into the Grand Canyon University Hall-of-Fame by their College of Theology. In addition, he serves as president emeritus of The Christian Writers Institute and is the author of the annual Christian Writers Market Guide, Write Your First Novel (with Gilbert Morris), and The Chosen Presents: A Blended Harmony of the Gospels (with Dallas and Amanda Jenkins). His office is in Phoenix, Arizona.
We thank the following publishers for their sponsoring support of The Christy Award® program:
We thank the following organizations for their promotional support:
We thank the following companies for their support of the industry and this program:
