Announcing our 2022 STEP Winners!

The publishing industry has been widely criticized for its lack of BIPOC voices. At She Writes Press and SparkPress, we are well aware of the need for more and broader representation of BIPOC authors on our lists.

In an effort to address this issue head-on we launched the She Writes Press and SparkPress Toward Equality in Publishing (STEP) contest in 2018 to offer a publishing package (plus a 500-book print run) to publish on either She Writes Press or SparkPress.

We’d like to give a special thanks to our judges, author Elizabeth G. Hines, award-winning author and past STEP winner Veena Rao, and Serendipity Literary Agency founder Regina Brooks.

Meet the lovely winners of our fifth annual contest below, and show them some love on social!

Lally Pia, MD, author of Doctor of Doctors

Publishing on She Writes Press, Spring 2024

Lally Pia, MD, is a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist at a non-profit mental health clinic in Sacramento. Doctor of Doctors is her debut memoir. She is a member of California Writers’ Clubs (Sacramento, Fremont), Elk Grove Writers and the Davis Writers’ Salon. She received Honorable Mention in a Writers Digest competition in 2020, provided a workshop on Seeing Through Your Character’s Eyes in June, 2022, and was recently a finalist for America’s Next Great Author.

About Doctor of Doctors:

Lally is in a rut. A coup closed her Ghana medical school, followed by a botched U.S. Green Card, so at age twenty-two she is separated from her family in California. With no money, nowhere to stay, and ethnic conflict raging in Sri Lanka, she is a refugee. She moves to South Wales and marries John Russell, but he is controlling, with traditional views about a woman’s place. They move in with Lally’s parents in California. Lally is alarmed by John’s anti-American sentiments and escalating verbal abuse. She becomes a U.S. citizen and leaves him. Plunging into welfare with two daughters, she works at a mortuary, but dreams about becoming a doctor. Eleven years later, she graduates as a child and adolescent psychiatrist.

Stephanie Curry, author of All Our Wars

Publishing on SparkPress, Fall 2024

I have recently published essays on Refinery29 and The Opal Club. I have also reported for the Tombstone Epitaph in Southern Arizona. As a bi-racial Mexican American who grew up 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, I was inspired to major in Journalism and minor in Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona in order to better understand the tumultuous political climate of border regions.

About All Our Wars: 

When a surprise announcement elevates Sofia De Luna, the estranged daughter of a Mexican cartel leader, to head of the family, she must choose between honoring her murdered mother’s wishes or protecting her family. As the political world shifts, Andres Herrera, an old family enemy, leverages his secret past with Sofia while her family clutches their last tendrils of power. Once a rogue DEA agent exposes the dark lengths Sofia’s family will go to keep their power, Sofia is caught between embracing the life she denounced, cementing her family’s violent legacy, or rewriting their history, no matter the risk.