The Catholic Writers Guild

Congratulations goes to CWG member Carol A. Grund who won the Catholic Arts and Letters Award for Blessing in Disguise. She writes:

The entire Anna Mei series is dear to my heart, but Blessing in Disguise was the most challenging to write. In the early stages, my editor at Pauline Kids—Jaymie Stuart Wolfe—encouraged me to dig deeper than the other two books had gone. By then I felt that I knew my character very well, and could write with confidence about her feelings of self-doubt. After all, in many ways, Anna Mei and I are one and the same. But I had little personal experience with adoption. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to this important topic, and that my work wouldn’t honor adoptive families and the very real challenges they face.

After prayerful consideration, I decided to forge ahead with the project. A lot of research, rewrites and sleepless nights later, my character of Anna Mei had come full-circle. Instead of trying to ignore or deny her identity and heritage, she was ready to embrace not only God’s plan for her, but all the things that made her unique. So it’s beyond gratifying that Blessing in Disguise has been singled out for the Catholic Arts and Letters Award. To know that members of the Catholic Writers Guild—talented writers all—have decided to recommend my book to Catholic children and their families means so much to me.

You can read more about Carol A. Grund and the Anna Mei series at CarolAGrund.com

ErikWasham

Erik Washam is a writer and blogger living in the Washington, DC Metro area. He is a contributor to the CWG blog and also posts regularly at CatholicMatchInstitute.com.