Congratulations to Katherine Scott Crawford, who has just been honored with a 2025 North Carolina Book Award in fiction, details below.
Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction: Katherine Scott Crawford for “The Miniaturist’s Assistant.” Crawford is an award-winning novelist whose historical fiction is steeped in a vivid sense of place. An 11th-generation Southerner born and raised in South Carolina, she spent 13 years as a college English professor and later wrote
as a columnist for The Greenville News (SC) and the Asheville Citizen-Times (NC), exploring the outdoors, parenting, books, and Southern life. A former backpacking guide and “recovering academic,” Crawford, who previously published “Keowee Valley,” believes historical fiction is the best way to time travel. Her stories explore how time is porous and what it means to be fully human—no matter the century. She lives with her family in the North Carolina