Outstanding Southeastern Author Award

Criteria

• Authors must be native or bona fide residents of a SELA state at the time the work was written or published.
• Works must be chosen based on literary merit.
• Two awards may be made: one in fiction and one in non-fiction.
• In each category, works must have been published within five years prior to December 31 of the year preceding the biennial conference.
• The person making the nomination must be a member of SELA.

Nomination Process

Submit nominations on this form along with any accompanying material (not to exceed four pages for each entry). Include reason(s) for nomination, book reviews, biography, and the like to the committee chair. Copies of the nominations will be distributed to all committee members.

Previous Outstanding Southeastern Author Award Winners

• 1978 Eudora Welty
• 1980 Richard Beale Davis
• 1982 Dumas Malone
• 1984 Gail Godwin
• 1986 No Award Given
• 1988 Ernest J. Gaines
• 1990 Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies
• 1992 Terry Kay (Fiction) and Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (Non-Fiction)
• 1994 John Grisham (Fiction) and Willie Morris (Non-Fiction)
• 1996 Doris Betts (Fiction) and John Edgerton (Non-Fiction)
• 1998 Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain (Fiction) and John F. Marszalek, The Petticoat Affair (Non-Fiction)
• 2000 E.L. Konigburg, The View from Saturday (Fiction) and Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin' (Non-Fiction)
• 2002 Ann Patchett, Bel Canto (Fiction) and Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Daylight (Non-Fiction)
• 2004 Sena Jeter Naslaund (Fiction) and Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (Non-Fiction)
• 2006 Sue Monk Kidd, Secret Life of Bees (Fiction) and Pat Conroy, Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life (Non-Fiction)
• 2008 Ravi Howard (Fiction) and Robert Morgan (Non-Fiction)
• 2010 Ron Rash, Burning Bright (Fiction) and Neil White, In The Sanctuary of Outcasts (Non-Fiction)
• 2012 No Award Given
• 2014 No Award Given
• 2016 Greg Iles, Natchez Burning (Fiction) and Rick Bragg, My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South (Non-Fiction)
• 2018 Donna Everhart, The Road to Bittersweet (Fiction) and Douglas Higbee, James Garvey, and Hebert Van Tuyll, In Their Own Words: Augusta and Aiken Area Veterans Remember World War II (Non-Fiction)
• 2020 Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give (Fiction) and Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (Non-Fiction)
• 2022 Carolyn Haines, Independent Bones (Fiction)
• 2022 Dr. Christopher Shaffer, Moon Over Sasova (Non-Fiction)
• 2024 Ron Rash, The Caretaker: A Novel (Fiction), Mary Kay Andrews, The Homewreckers: A Novel (Fiction), and Evan Dalton Smith, Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father's Journey (Non-Fiction)