Meet the Winners of the 2026 Scriptor From Pen to Prose Book Awards
Every finished book begins with an unfinished idea.
At some point, every author recognized in the 2026 Scriptor From Pen to Prose Book Awards faced a blank page. Each had a story, experience, lesson, or idea worth sharing. Turning that idea into a finished book required time, patience, and the willingness to keep writing when the words did not come easily.
The From Pen to Prose Book Awards were created by Scriptor Publishing Group to recognize authors who carried their ideas all the way through publication. The awards celebrate the work behind a finished book and the authors willing to put their names on stories that matter to them.
This year, five books were selected across memoir, health and wellness, faith-based living, and children’s literature. Each book approaches a different subject, but all five reflect an author with something meaningful to say.
We are proud to introduce the winners of the 2026 Scriptor From Pen to Prose Book Awards.
Overall Winner: LIGHT: The New Psychology of Weight Loss by Lizzie Merritt
Most people who have tried to lose weight know the familiar cycle. A new diet begins with clear rules and good intentions. Then life gets busy, the routine becomes harder to maintain, and one difficult day can make the entire plan feel like a failure.
Lizzie Merritt takes a different approach in LIGHT: The New Psychology of Weight Loss. Instead of giving readers another set of food rules, Merritt looks at the psychology behind eating, habits, weight, and the expectations people place on themselves.
That approach earned LIGHT the title of Overall Winner of the 2026 From Pen to Prose Book Awards.
Lizzie writes for people who may have spent years believing they failed at dieting because they lacked discipline. Her book asks readers to look more closely at the systems and beliefs they have been following.
Perfection plays a major role in that conversation. Many diets depend on following a plan correctly for long periods. Real life rarely cooperates. Stress builds, schedules change, and motivation comes and goes. When the plan breaks down, people often blame themselves rather than questioning whether the plan was realistic in the first place.
LIGHT examines that pattern without relying on calorie charts or strict food rules. Lizzie discusses stress, self-sabotage, shame, habits, and the pressure surrounding weight loss. She also brings psychology and brain science into the conversation while keeping the material approachable.
The book ultimately asks readers to think about what they want their lives to look like beyond a number on the scale. Weight loss becomes part of a larger conversation about health, habits, trust, and the way people treat themselves while trying to change.
For readers who have spent years moving from one diet to another, LIGHT presents a different way to think about sustainable weight loss.
Health & Wellness Winner: Braving the Journey: Rising Above Life’s Challenges by Vicki Cable
Life can change without warning. Loss, disappointment, uncertainty, and unexpected circumstances can interrupt plans and leave people trying to understand what comes next.
Vicki Cable writes for people moving through those seasons in Braving the Journey: Rising Above Life’s Challenges, the 2026 From Pen to Prose winner in Nonfiction: Health & Wellness.
Vicki’s book focuses on resilience, healing, courage, and hope. Through personal stories, encouraging messages, and practical insights, she considers how people can continue moving forward when life looks different from what they expected.
The book does not ignore the weight of difficult experiences. It recognizes that hardship affects people and that healing can take time. Vicki also leaves room for the possibility that a difficult chapter does not have to define every chapter that follows.
Faith is an important part of that perspective. Readers are encouraged to hold onto the possibility of better days while finding the courage to take the next step in front of them.
That message can matter when the next step is the only one a person feels capable of taking.
Braving the Journey speaks to readers who may be somewhere between what happened and what comes next. It offers encouragement without pretending that difficult circumstances disappear overnight.
For readers facing change or recovering from a difficult season, Vicki’s book offers a reminder that progress can begin before every answer is clear.
Memoir Winner: My Labor of Love by Sherry Woodry
A meaningful life story does not need to be built around fame or extraordinary circumstances. Some stories earn their meaning through family, friendship, work, change, responsibility, and the experiences that shape a person over time.
Sherry Woodry brings those experiences together in My Labor of Love, the 2026 From Pen to Prose winner in Nonfiction: Memoir.
Sherry’s story begins with a childhood spent living across seven villages. Moving through different communities meant learning to adjust to changes in everyday life while finding stability through the people around her.
As Sherry enters her teenage years, friendship becomes an important part of her story. The people in her life help strengthen the determination and work ethic that would continue to shape her future.
Family bonds also remain central throughout her journey. Caring for others becomes part of the foundation on which she builds her own life, even as new opportunities create room for personal growth and accomplishment.
The title captures an important part of Sherry’s story. A labor of love involves effort, but that effort is connected to people and purposes that give the work meaning.
Her memoir also shows how a life is often shaped gradually. One relationship can influence a decision. One opportunity can create another. Lessons learned early can continue shaping choices years later.
Those moments may appear ordinary while they are happening. Looking back allows their meaning to become clearer.
Through My Labor of Love, Sherry preserves those moments and the people connected to them. Her story also gives readers space to consider the experiences that created the foundation of their own lives.
Children’s Book Winner: Woody’s Leap of Faith by Julie Boden Schmidt
For a newly hatched wood duckling, forty feet can feel like an enormous distance.
That is the challenge waiting for Woody in Julie Boden Schmidt’s Woody’s Leap of Faith, winner of the 2026 From Pen to Prose Children’s Book Award.
Woody and his siblings, Buzz and Zoey, face an important moment soon after hatching. They must leave their nest high in a tree and jump to the ground below.
Buzz and Zoey are prepared to make the leap. Woody would rather remain where he feels safe.
The situation gives young readers an easy way to understand Woody’s fear. Children may never need to jump from a tree like a wood duckling, but they know what it feels like to face something unfamiliar.
Woody has to decide what he will do with that fear.
With encouragement from his siblings, he begins moving from uncertainty toward the courage needed to take his leap. Julie tells her story with wit while giving children a character they can relate to during moments when their own world feels uncertain.
The book also gives parents, grandparents, and teachers an opportunity to talk with children about courage. Being brave does not always mean feeling completely comfortable with what comes next. Sometimes courage means moving forward while some fear remains.
That lesson fits naturally within Woody’s adventure.
Whether a child is facing a first day of school, trying something new, making a new friend, or dealing with change, Woody’s experience offers a familiar feeling in a memorable story.
Faith-Based Living Winner: Built For Storms by Derek Blacksher
The best time to strengthen a foundation is before it is tested.
Derek Blacksher builds Built For Storms: Unlock the Secrets to Experience Your Most Fulfilling and Fortified Life around that principle. The book earned the 2026 From Pen to Prose award in Nonfiction: Faith-Based Living.
Written primarily for men, Built For Storms examines how people can prepare for difficult seasons before those seasons arrive. Derek approaches that preparation through Christian teaching and a focus on spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical strength.
John 10:10 provides an important biblical foundation for the book. Derek uses the distinction between “Bios” life and “Zoe” life to encourage readers to examine whether they are merely getting through their days or living according to a deeper purpose.
The image of a fortress carries that idea throughout the book.
Drawing inspiration from Fort McHenry, Derek asks readers to examine the weak areas in their own lives. A weakness may remain unnoticed when circumstances are comfortable. Pressure has a way of exposing what was already there.
Faith, family, fitness, finances, and fuel become areas for that examination. Derek uses them to help readers consider their habits, priorities, responsibilities, and spiritual lives.
The book places preparation at the center of resilience. Rather than waiting for hardship to reveal what needs attention, readers are encouraged to strengthen those areas now.
Christian faith remains the foundation of that work. Personal discipline has a purpose beyond achievement. It becomes part of building a life capable of remaining grounded when circumstances become difficult.
Built For Storms asks readers to consider what they are building today and whether that foundation can support them when life becomes harder.
Celebrating the 2026 From Pen to Prose Winners
These five books were written for different readers and different moments in life.
Lizzie Merritt examines our relationship with food, weight, and personal expectations in LIGHT: The New Psychology of Weight Loss.
Vicki Cable writes about resilience and moving forward through difficult seasons in Braving the Journey.
Sherry Woodry preserves a life shaped by family, friendship, work, and change in My Labor of Love.
Julie Boden Schmidt introduces children to Woody, a small duckling facing a large fear in Woody’s Leap of Faith.
Derek Blacksher encourages men to strengthen the foundations of their lives before hardship arrives in Built For Storms.
Writing a book can begin with excitement, but excitement alone rarely carries a manuscript to completion. Authors encounter difficult chapters, revisions, uncertainty, and days when progress feels slow. Finishing requires returning to the work anyway.
The 2026 From Pen to Prose Book Awards give Scriptor Publishing Group the opportunity to recognize authors who made that commitment.
We are proud to celebrate Lizzie Merritt, Vicki Cable, Sherry Woodry, Julie Boden Schmidt, and Derek Blacksher and the books they chose to bring into the world.
Their subjects may be different, but each author made the same important decision at some point in the process. They decided the book was worth finishing.
That decision turned an idea into a manuscript and a manuscript into something readers can now hold, share, discuss, and remember.
Congratulations to all five winners of the 2026 Scriptor From Pen to Prose Book Awards. Your books have reached the page, and readers now have the opportunity to decide what those stories will mean to them.
If you, or someone you know, is interested in writing a book but isn’t sure where to begin, go to scriptorpublishinggroup.com to learn more.
