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The Humor and Satire Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Humorous, Satirical and Allegorical Fiction. The Grand Prize Winner, Mike Murphey’s book, Quantum Consequence, will be promoted for years to come in our annual Hall of Fame article to come, as well as be featured on the Humor and Satire contest page year ’round!
The best part about being a Chanticleer Int’l Book Award Winner is the love and attention you get all year!
The 2023 Humor and Satire Winners were announced at the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference in April, and you can see the official winners post here!
Join us in celebrating the 2023 First Place Humor and Satire Winners!
Eileen O’Finlan – All the Furs and Feathers
Smokey, an architect employed by Fluffington ArCATecture, lands the account of her dreams — designing the first ever cat park in Faunaburg. Her boss, Abigail Fluffington, says that if Smokey is successful, she’ll become a partner and inherit the business.
A dream come true? There’s one problem. The proposed park is adjacent to Rodent Way. Activist Jerome J. Ratley, quickly forms R.A.T. (Rodent Action Taskforce) and stages a protest.
Meanwhile, Smokey’s lovable but quirky sister and cooking savant, Autumn Amelia, is busy dishing up meals too delicious for any fur or feather to resist. And wandering uninvited into the kitchens of local restaurants to improve their recipes.
Together with their furred and feathered friends, Smokey and Autumn Amelia must find a way to make the proposed park a reality. But how to abolish the long-standing animosity between felines and rodents?
Allyson Rice – The Key to Circus-Mom Highway
In an attempt to secure an unexpected inheritance–and hopefully find a few answers–two estranged sisters and their newly discovered brother embark on a comically surreal trip through the Deep South to retrace the life of the mother who abandoned them.
On a Tuesday afternoon, sisters Jesse Chasen and Jennifer McMahon receive a phone call notifying them that the birth mother they had no knowledge of has died, leaving behind a significant inheritance. But in order to obtain it, they must follow a detailed road trip she designed for them to get to know her–and that includes finding a brother they never knew existed.
For the next week, this ill-assorted trio treks across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia to meet their mother’s old friends, from circus-performers to a juke joint owner, each of whom delivers a shocking vignette into the life of a young mother traumatized by loss and abuse. Along the way, these three siblings–Jesse, whose fiery exterior disguises a drifting musician stuck in a rut; Jennifer, whose carefully curated family life is threatened by her husband’s infidelity; and Jack, whose enigmatic Jackie, Oh! persona in the New Orleans drag queen scene helps him escape the nightmares of Afghanistan that haunt him–must confront their own demons (and at least one alligator). But in chasing the truth about their real mother, they may all just find their second chance.
Marco Ocram – The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair
TV personality Marco Ocram is the world’s only self-penned character, writing his life in real time as you read it. Marco’s celebrity mentor, Herbert Quarry, grooms him to be the Jackson Pollock of literature, teaching him to splatter words on a page without thought or revision.
Quarry’s plan backfires when imbecilic Marco begins to type his first thought-free book: it’s a murder mystery-and Herbert’s caught red-handed by the butchered body of his lover.
Now Marco must write himself into a crusade to clear his friend’s name. Typing the first words that come into his head, Marco unleashes a phantasmagorical catalogue of twists in his pursuit of justice, writing the world’s fastest-selling book to reveal the awful truth about the Herbert Quarry affair.
Lou Dischler – The Rising
While The Rising is a Manuscript, we’ve had the pleasure of reviewing his book My Only Sunshine, and we’ll include that here in celebration of his writing.
Lou Dischler delivers an intricately woven story about one well-meaning boy who tries to make sense of the crazy he’s been born into. Get ready for one belly laugh of an adventure in My Only Sunshine.
Welcome to the Louisiana low country, home of 9-year-old Charlie Boone, a kid growing up in 1962. Charlie, a most unreliable narrator, concerns himself with giant wingless wasps and biting red velvet ants. Combine his critter-concerns with the legend of the giant slugs, the story of his mother taken up by a hurricane, and the episode of the puddle he and his brother dug that grew into a pond, then turned into a lake, and we have one wildly imaginative ride well-worth taking.
Dischler delivers an epic tale that shifts from Charlie’s first-person point-of-view with his youthful ignorance coloring his observations to his Uncle Dan’s and “Aunt” Lola’s in third-person point-of-view. While Charlie ages and grows in wisdom as the story progresses, his uncle never seems to gain a lick of sense. Dischler skillfully applies the laws of magic realism to Charlie’s wonderful way of viewing his world. Uncle Dan’s story, on the other hand, derives from an inept conman’s rap-sheet – from failed grifts to bank robbery bungles that succeed only by accident. Dischler guides us, normalizing the ridiculous to the point that the characters jump off the page and set up camp in your living room.
Steven Mayfield – The Penny Mansions
With the Spanish flu pandemic on the rise, a former gold rush town— once the largest city in the Pacific Northwest— is threatened with extinction via eminent domain should their population fall below 125 citizens. To save their homes, former madam Maude Dollarhyde, her mixed-race grand-daughter, Bountiful, and their fellow council members agree to sell four abandoned mansions for a penny apiece if the buyers will stay in town long enough to be counted in the 1920 census. Soon, an eclectic cast of newcomers arrives, including a New York actor and his questionably-familial family; a lawyer with an agoraphobic wife, mute son, and austere nanny; six excommunicated Mormons; and the great-nephew of the town’ s hated former boss. As real estate developer and politician Gerald Dredd plots to foil the council’ s plan, the new families move in and knock over the first domino in a row that includes three romances, twelve sticks of dynamite, an unintentionally hilarious community theater production, an investigation by a Chicago insurance detective, and last of all, murder!
Tom Strelich – Water Memory
The earth’s magnetic poles have reversed and civilization has just had its clock reset to the great cosmic flashing 12:00am from almost a million years ago, and humanity, and everybody in it, is pretty much forgetting everything it learned since the last time.
Everybody except Hertell Daggett, who remembers pretty much everything because he’d once been shot in the head — the doctors got the bullet out, but missed a few tiny specks of copper that remained, floating inside his brain, connecting him to the things everybody else on earth is slowly forgetting. Hertell sees an opportunity to start civilization all over again, and maybe even get it right this time. What could possibly go wrong?
Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2023 Humor and Satire First Place Winners!
Your book can join the Tiers of Achievement, but only if you submit to the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards!
Got a great Fiction Book? The 2024 Humor and Satire Book Awards are open through the end of October!
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