Schultz wins Sir Walter Raleigh Award for fiction

The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association has named Katey Schultz’s Still Come Home the winner of the 2020 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. This prestigious award is presented in recognition of the most significant work of original fiction published in the past year by a North Carolina author.

Past recipients include Lee Zacharias, Wiley Cash, Lee Smith, Ron Rash, Kaye Gibbons, Reynolds Price, Charles Frazier, and Clyde Edgerton.

This is one of five wins for Still Come Home, which also won the Silver Medal from the Military Writers Society of America, a Bronze Medal from the Foreword INDIES, and was named a finalist by the National Indie Excellence Awards. This week, Schultz and Still Come Home were also awarded the 2020 Book of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association in the Indie Fiction category. Still Come Home is published by Loyola University’s Apprentice House.

Schultz lives in Celo, North Carolina.

Set in both Western North Carolina and Afghanistan, the three characters in Katey Schultz’s novel are each searching for the best way to be, the best way to live — all the while fighting cultural, societal, and political forces far beyond their control. As their paths intersect over the span of three days, Still Come Home explores how their decisions will forever alter each other’s lives.

Smoky Mountain Living book reviewer Jeff Minick said Still Come Home brought tears to his eyes. The book takes readers through three days of the Afghan war as seen through the eyes of an American lieutenant, a 17-year-old Afghani girl named Aaseya, and her older husband, Rahim.

“Schultz transports us into a part of the world unfamiliar to many Americans, even after 18 years of our nation’s involvement in Afghanistan. When we walk through the marketplace and war-gutted streets of Imar with Aaseya, the town comes alive: the smoke from the many cooking fires, the dust and the heat, the constant shifting of alliances among neighbors, the lack of water, the allure of fresh fruit. When Aaseya befriends and then takes into her home a young mute orphan, Ghazel, we witness as well the tragic impact of war on small children,” Minick wrote.

The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association is North Carolina’s oldest civic organization. The group has proudly promoted North Carolina’s cultural heritage — its history, literature, and arts — since 1900. The Sir Walter Raleigh Award is also sponsored by the Historical Book Club of North Carolina and has been presented since 1953.

Learn more at www.kateyschultz.com.