BC author up for international award
October 15th, 2024

The NYC Big Book Award has honored Caitlin Hicks’ Kennedy Girl (Brown Posey Press $27.10) as a Distinguished Favorite in the Historical Fiction category for its 2024 competition. This achievement follows a previous recognition for the first book in the Annie Shea series, the audiobook A Theory of Expanded Love, which also received the Distinguished Favorite award from the NYC Big Book Award in 2022.
Judged by industry experts—including publishers, writers, editors, designers, booksellers, librarians, and professional copywriters—the awards recognize winners and distinguished favorites based on overall excellence.
In this book, 17-year-old Annie Shea’s life takes a dramatic turn on the night of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. Feeling confident after her performance in the production named HAIR and volunteering for RFK’s campaign, Annie is at the Ambassador Hotel when tragedy strikes. Alongside Lucas, a talented black performer and her crush, she witnesses RFK’s shooting and follows the ambulance in a chaotic journey through LA.
As their lives unravel, Annie skips her first day of university to drive Lucas and her brother to Canada, evading the law. On this suspenseful road trip, she uncovers her brother’s painful secrets, while grappling with love, justice, racism and the struggles of the 1960s. Annie’s coming-of-age journey is marked by self-discovery, as she learns to find her voice amid a rapidly changing world.
*
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
According to Caitlin Hicks, the central circumstance of her existence is that she was, “born into a very large military Catholic family in the United States of America.”
Growing up in Pasadena, California she wrote, performed and directed family plays with her thirteen brothers and sisters. She went on to become an author and international playwright. Monologues from several of her plays are featured in Smith & Kraus’ series Best Women’s Stage Monologues (New York). Hicks wrote the play, later adapted for the screen, Singing the Bones, which debuted at the Montreal World Film Festival (2001) and has been screened internationally.
A Theory of Expanded Love (Light Messages, North Carolina, 2015) is her debut novel about a young girl, Annie, and her Catholic family. Annie wants to elevate her family in their parish but is held back by her secrets — what she later reveals as “The Hands” that visit her in bed and the fact that her sister becomes pregnant “out of wedlock.” When Annie realizes her parents will do anything to protect their reputation, she takes courageous risks to find salvation from the tragic events that ensue.
According to publicity materials: Hicks’ next novel, Kennedy Girl (2023), “features Annie Shea in her 1968 senior year in Catholic high school in Pasadena, as she performs in a scandalous production of ‘Hair,’ as she sneaks out at night to volunteer for the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, as she follows her heart into the world, discovering the personal, human price of racism, the legacy of the Vietnam war and the deep hypocrisy of a charismatic Catholic priest, as she participates in women’s changing role in society, as she explores the meaning of home and country, as she struggles to find her voice amidst the chaos, danger and rebellion of the late Sixties. Fleeing the country with her AWOL brother to Canada, Annie begins to speak as a world citizen.”
Caitlin Hicks has published several short stories and worked as a writer for CBS and NBC radio in the United States, and has performed her fiction and non-fiction for CBC radio. Her writing has been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Vancouver Sun, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Fiddlehead Magazine, Knight Literary Journal and other publications.
She lives in British Columbia.
*
ABOUT THE AWARD
This award is for independently and traditionally published authors, publishers, big and small presses. Books are judged on presentation, editorial quality and audience appeal. Submissions are welcome in several categories: fiction and nonfiction, children to adult. Audiobooks are also accepted.
Leave a Reply