2026 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite
For Immediate Release by Printed Word Reviews
“Poems and Photographs” by Tony Nesca
2026 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite Seal
Screamin’ Skull Press
Canadian Author Tony Nesca’s Gritty, Unfiltered Collection Captures the Real and Surreal Pulse of Working-class Existence, earning honors at NYC Big Book Award
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA, September 28, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Unpolished grit of the street to working-class life takes center stage in “Poems and Photographs” by Canadian writer Tony Nesca, officially named a Distinguished Favorite in the Poetry-Nature, Place, and the Environment category at the prestigious NYC Big Book Awards.
Judged by a panel of industry veterans including publishers, writers, editors, librarians, booksellers, and professional copywriters, the NYC Big Book Award celebrate overall excellence across the global literary landscape. Nesca’s award-winning collection stood out for its uncompromising vision, seamlessly pairing evocative full color photography with visceral, rhythm-driven verse.
Set against the stark visual backdrops of Winnipeg and New York City, “Poems and Photographs” operates without safety nets or comfortable resolutions. The collection confronts the weight of manual labor, the ghosts of memory, raw desire, and the inevitability of mortality. Refusing to sanitize the human experience, Nesca uncovers a strange, electric beauty hiding within alleyways, late-night diners, and forgotten urban corners.
“This isn’t poetry written in a quiet ivory tower,” says Nesca. “It’s born on the pavement, grounded in actual sweat, noise, and lived reality. To have an award based in New York recognize a book so heavily rooted in the concrete and shadow of these specific places is a profound honor.”
By blurring the lines between place and emotion, “Poems and Photographs” expands the tradition of environment-focused literature, arguing that the modern urban streetscape is as powerful a force of nature as any wilderness.
“A wide-ranging, restless body of work… grounded in lived experience, unafraid of darkness, and alive to the strange beauty hiding in plain sight” says Tony Nesca about his “Poems and Photographs.”
NYC Big Book Award received book submissions worldwide. Entrepreneurs, Film & Television writers, Historians, and Journalists, from well established to first time indie authors and presses participated.
Entries this year were received from the United States as well as countries such as Australia, Canada, China, Dubai, England, Germany, Ghana, Greece, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. Cities represented among the entries were Auckland, Baltimore, Dallas, Frankfurt, Hollywood, Johannesburg, Manhattan Beach, New Orleans, NYC, Philadelphia, Sydney, and West Palm Beach.
Publishers included Beacon Press, Berrett-Koehler, Casemate, Edinburgh University Press, Forbes Books, Kiplinger Books, NYU Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Rizzoli, Routledge, The White House Historical Association, University of California Press, and Wiley.
We have an amazing list of authors from around the globe participating this year, said awards sponsor Gabby Olczak. I’m so excited to share these books with a worldwide readership!
To view the list of NYC Big Book winners and distinguished favorites, visit: https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/.
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NYC Big Book Award, https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/, is announced every fall. NYC Big Book Award is open to all authors, publishers, and illustrators, and includes submissions from the big five publishers. Join us for the Awards Dinner on April 10th, https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/awardsdinner, held at the BookCAMP event, April 9-10, 2027, https://www.ipabookcamp.com, where recipients walk on stage to receive their awards.
Gabby Olczak
Independent Press Award / NYC Big Book Award
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