The Last Boat Out is an EPPIE winner!

The Last Boat Out: Memoirs of a Triumphant Vietnamese-American Family won the EPPIE for General Nonfiction! (Note: as of 2/1/08, this book is no longer in print.)

The EPPIE award, the e-publishing version of the Oscar, is presented by EPIC, the Electronically Published Internet Connection, for e-books (Last Boat Out is available in both print and e-book). Awards in a number of categories were presented at a gala ceremony at the EPIC conference in Virginia Beach, Virginia tonight.

The authors are a husband and wife – he was a South Vietnamese military officer and she was a housewife injured in the Tet Offensive. Their daughter-in-law, who grew up in Vietnam and only came to the States a few years ago, translated their diaries from Vietnamese to English. Her husband, the couple’s son who was also injured in the Tet Offensive, helped her. Since the English is a second language for the translator, the book required extensive editing. GASLight Publishing, owned by my friends Grace Anne and Ken Schaefer, published the book.

I took the two translated diaries, combined them so the text flowed in logical order, and edited the manuscript to retain the individual Vietnamese voices while making it readable for an American audience.

We got a great quote from the head of the Vietnamese-American project at the Smithsonian and a lot of wonderful reviews. But this award caps it for me because the EPPIE is recognized as the premier award in e-publishing and the judges are all my peers.

[tags]EPPIE award, The Last Boat Out, GASLight Publishing[/tags]