The Best Southern Books of the Year!
Announcing the 2023 Southern Book Prize Finalists

(Asheville, NC) Southern independent booksellers have selected the finalists for the 2023 Southern Book Prize (SBP), representing bookseller favorites from 2022 that are Southern in nature—either about the South or by a Southern writer.

SBP nominations are submitted by bookseller members of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) and culled from books that have received enthusiastic reviews from Southern booksellers. These 18 finalists, six in each category, received the highest number of nominations, making them a collection of the most beloved “hand sells” in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature of the year.

The finalists make up the 2023 Southern Book Prize ballot at www.southernbookprize.com. Voting opens November 3 and will run through February 1, 2023 and is open to booksellers and readers who love Southern literature and Southern independent bookstores. Participating bookstores promote the ballot to their customers, and submitted ballots are entered into a raffle to win a set of the finalist titles.

Winners in each category will be chosen by popular vote. Southern Book Prize winners will be announced on February 14, Valentine’s Day.

SIBA launched the public ballot to encourage bookstores to engage their customers in the important question of what books deserve to be called “the best Southern book of the year.”

The Finalists: Fiction

Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson [Ecco]
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery [MCD]
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb [Anchor]
Book Lovers by Emily Henry [Berkley]
A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow [Tordotcom]
Lark Ascending by Silas House [Algonquin Books]

Nonfiction

Beyond Innocence by Phoebe Zerwick [Atlantic Monthly Press]
The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón [Milkweed Editions]
Child: A Memoir by Judy Goldman [University of South Carolina Press]
This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris [Catapult]
Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives by Mary Laura Philpott [Atria Books]
Spine Poems: An Eclectic Collection of Found Verse for Book Lovers by Annette Dauphin Simon [Harper Design]

Children's

Beatrice Likes the Dark by April Genevieve Tucholke, Khoa Le (Illus.) [Algonquin Young Readers]
This Vicious Grace by Emily Thiede [Wednesday Books]
Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White [Peachtree Teen]
The Problem with Prophecies by Scott Teintgen [Aladdin]
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston [Wednesday Books]
Nigel and the Moon by Antwan Eady, Gracey Zhang (Illus.) [Katherine Tegan Books]

For more information about The Southern Book Prize, contact Linda-Marie Barrett, Executive Director, Southern Booksellers Alliance or visit
https://thesouthernbooksellerreview.org/southern-book-prize