The Christy Award: Excellence in Christian Fiction, An Annotated Bibliography.

The burgeoning interest in Christian fiction that has marked recent years has brought with it a proliferation of new writers who are trying to make their way into the mainstream market. Alongside this growth has come a need to establish guidelines that would encourage a high standard of quality in the field. The Christian publishing industry itself responded to this challenge in 1999 by establishing an award that would identify novels and novelists of excellence. By acknowledging authors worthy of note, they hoped to encourage both creativity and quality in writing, broaden readership of the genre, and bring recognition and exposure to authors who had not yet reached a large readership