Local Author Nominated For Coveted Edgar Award
A lifelong resident of Lake County has been nominated for a national award for excellence in writing. Penny Dawn (Ptaszek) DeBernardis, a graduate of Antioch Community High School, now resides in Grayslake. A former instructor of composition at The College of Lake County (Grayslake) and McHenry County College (Crystal Lake), DeBernardis juggles a full-time business and motherhood, while writing and publishing in two fiction genres. Her May 2018 release, BLINK (written as Sasha Dawn), is nominated for the coveted Edgar award, a prestigious award for excellence in the mystery genre.
On January 22, the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced the novel was among five nominees in the category of Young Adult . The Edgar, equivalent to the Oscar of the film industry, is named for Edgar Allan Poe, and as such, the ceremonies honoring the award coincide with the 210th anniversary of Poe's birth.
The 73rd annual MWA awards will be held in New York City on April 25, 2019. DeBernardis will attend the gala. Other nominees include writers of hit series television (i.e., Blue Bloods, The Romanoffs, Brooklyn Nine-nine), short stories, and best-selling novels. Previous winners of awards presented at past galas include the famed masters Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark.
BLINK, DeBernardis's third book as Sasha Dawn, has been acclaimed by critical journals as "solid noir with complicated double twists, questions about who's to be believed, and a persistent sinister threat" (Center for Children's Books), and "gritty realism [with an] attention-grabbing opening that will hook fans of suspenseful thrillers all the way to its satisfying conclusion" (Booklist).
While other nominees hail from well-known New York publishing houses, such as Harper Collins and Random House, et al, BLINK comes to the table from an independent publisher based in Minneapolis, Minnesota-Lerner Books' Carolrhoda LAB imprint. When put in perspective of the wide scope of reach and influence of these publishing powerhouses, the nomination is a feat within itself.
While she has been writing her entire life, DeBernardis launched writing as a career as a single mother of two toddler girls over a decade ago, when she penned seven romance novels. Her rise to the Edgar nomination is the result of hard work, honed talent, and persistence. Since the publication of her first mainstream novel (as Sasha Dawn, Egmont USA's Oblivion 2014), she has survived breast cancer for the second time, founded a sought-after home design firm (Amazing Spaces by Penny Dawn) for which she is the principle designer, and has written in other genres under the pseudonym Brandi Reeds. Her first release as Reeds (Lake Union Press's TRESPASSING, 2018) quickly rose to the top of Amazon charts. Readers can expect a book by both Sasha Dawn (PANIC) and Brandi Reeds (THIRD PARTY) in 2019 with two others in the pipeline for 2020.