“The Other Jackie Robinson” Gets a Little Attention!

My novel The Other Jackie Robinson was a finalist for the annual Top of the Mountain book award! I traveled to Fort Collins for the Northern Colorado Writers’ Conference April 22, 23 and met a lot of great people involved in writing, agenting and publishing. I was hard to miss in my Brooklyn Dodgers jersey, number 42 (of course!) which was sort of a litmus test and sort of a data pull and also a marketing gesture. I was curious who knew the significance of the number on the jersey right after the Jackie Robinson celebration week (when all baseball players wear the number 42), the release of the Ken Burns film and the recent trip Rachel Robinson took to Cuba with President Obama. I did not win the prize, but hey, I got to spend time with some wonderful writerly people. The jersey experiment tells me that Jackie Robinson is recognized by more people right now than ever before. Maybe not as high a percentage as during his lifetime, but more people. That’s my slightly informed opinion.

A standalone chapter from the novel (#20, if you count chapters) won first prize as a short story in the Big Pond Fiction Contest! Yeah! The story is called  Black Man Running, 1969. So was the chapter.

Just a little added trivia, because I do count chapters—The Other Jackie Robinson has a total of 42 chapters. Amazing coincidence, ya think?

—Larry