DENVER – The Coalition of Visionary Resources presented winners as part of their annual awards at the International New Age Trade Show (INATS) – The Tradeshow for Conscious Living. The formal awards ceremony was hosted by Tracee Dunblazier and featured Debbie Krovitz, Andrew Toplarski, and Darlene Koldenhoven.
The awards ceremony was conducted both in person and virtually, with the broadcast featured via Facebook.
The Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR) defines itself as “a not-for-profit trade organization dedicated to supporting independent retailers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and publishers of visionary books, music, and merchandise.”
COVR further outlines its mission:
It is our intention to provide service and support on a business-to-business basis. We are members helping members within the retailer and wholesaler community in the visionary, New Age, metaphysical, alternative healing, and spiritual industries. Included in our membership are consciousness-based individuals or companies who demonstrate an active interest in supporting our market to grow, succeed, and expand.
COVR Member Benefits supports embrace a spiritual world view characterized by global concern, social conscience, peaceful coexistence, and ecological sustainability. This world view includes the various forms of personal freedoms and human rights, including civil rights, peace, social justice, and equal rights for women. At the more personal level, COVR supports companies that emphasize creativity and personal growth, and generally hold in high regard the concepts of integrity, altruism, self-actualization, optimism, spirituality, authenticity, holism, and direct personal experience.
Each year COVR publishes a list of finalists that have been chosen from those who submitted their work in a variety of categories. Members then vote to determine the winners, which are announced each year at the annual INATS.
The awards are divided into four main categories: audio-visual, books, jewelry, and products, which includes tarot and oracle cards. Each category also had a number of subcategories, and awards are presented in the level of Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Each year there are several special awards, which include the People’s Choice, Industry Choice, and an Award of the Year in each of the categories.
Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. authors had an impressive showing, racking up a total of 30 awards, more than any other publisher. The list of wins included the 2022 People’s Choice Book Award for Tarot by the Moon by Victoria Constantino, which also won a Silver award in Tarot Books.
“Honestly, I was surprised to find my book as a COVR finalist, let alone winning gold,” said Heather Greene, author, journalist, and Acquisitions Editor for Llewellyn. (Greene is also familiar to TWH readers as our former editor-in-chief.) “I’m absolutely honored to have been included and to now be among the many distinguished winners, some of whom I know personally as colleagues and friends.”
Greene also expressed her joy at seeing so many of Llewellyn’s authors being selected as both finalists and winners. “What is equally as wonderful as winning myself is seeing my Llewellyn authors, talented people with whom I work professionally, recognized as COVR finalists and winners. It is an indescribable joy to be a small part of another writer realizing their dream and then being awarded for it. Indescribable.”
Among their 16 Gold awards winners were Lights Camera Witchcraft by Heather Greene in the category of Art Books; A Year of Pagan Prayer by Barbara Nolan in the category of Contemporary Religion; Norse Divination by Gypsey Elaine Teague in the Divination Books category; and in the category of Folk Magic, New World Witchery by Cory Thomas Hutchenson.
Teague said, “I thank Llewellyn for taking a chance on this novel retelling of the stories of the Gods and to my readers who accepted it.”
Awyn Dawn’s Paganism for Prisoners won a Gold award in the category of Earth Changes & Social Justice; Heal Your Ancestors to Heal Your Life by Shelley A. Kaehr, Ph.D. received a Gold award in the category of Personal Growth & Self-Help; and in Tarot Books, Sasha Graham took Gold for The Magic of Tarot.
In the Iconic Books category for Gold, Inner Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczak took the award.
In the Book Series category, Llewellyn’s Elements of Witchcraft Series by Lilith Dorsey, Astrea Taylor, Josephine Winter, and Dodie Graham McKay took Gold, and Llewellyn’s Little Books Series by Melanie Marquis, Jaime Gironés, Jason Mankey, and Shawn MacKenzie took Bronze. (Gironés is a regular contributor to TWH.)
Lilith Dorsey told TWH, “It was truly an honor to receive the COVR award for my book Water Magic and the other books in the Elements of Witchcraft series. The book is an artful blending of both the anthropology and history of water magic. Thank you to everyone who voted, read, and reviewed.”
Additionally Llewellyn authors had 10 Silver award winners and three Bronze awards that spanned a variety of categories.
Authors and creators published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. had eight Gold winners, primarily in the the Products category, which included Tabula Mortem by Judas Knight & Jerome VanDyke, Marianne Palmer (designer) in both the categories of Divination and Tabletop Games and Matt Hughes’ Dreamscape Oracle.
Notably, U.S. Games System, Inc. founder Stuart Kaplan’s book Encyclopedia of Tarot was awarded the Silver in category of Iconic Books. Kaplan, who passed away in February of 2021, founded the company in 1968 and led the way in publishing tarot and oracle decks, helping to set the trend for the current popularity of decks around the world.
Alana Fairchild, published by Blue Angel Publishing, holds the distinction of winning the most awards of any single recipient, with four. Fairchild won two awards: Gold for The Kuan Yin Transmission in the Guided Meditations category and Wings of Wisdom App (with Lindy Longhurst); a Silver in Divination Books for 333 Oracle of Heart Wisdom; and a Bronze award for White Light Frequencies in the category of Frequency & Transformational Music.
Blue Angel Publishing had five Gold award winners, two Silver winners, and four Bronze winners. Their author, Ravynne Phelan, won a Silver award in the category of Tarot Decks for Dreams of Gaia Tarot – Pocket Edition.
In the category of Wicca, Witchcraft & Magick Book, Ivo Dominguez’s Four Elements of the Wise, published by Red Wheel/Weiser, took the Gold award, with Silver in that category going to Thorn Mooney for The Witch’s Path (Llewellyn) and Devin Hunter’s Modern Witch (Llewellyn) winning the Bronze.
Perhaps the most notable win was Ellen Valladares & Yasmeen Westwood for winning all three Special Awards – Product of the Year, Industry Award of the Year, and People’s Choice Award of the Year – for their Hummingbird Wisdom Oracle Cards, published by Red Feather Mind, Body, Spirit. Their deck also won Gold in the category of Oracle Card Deck in Products.
TWH offers our congratulations to all of the finalists and winners. Well done! For complete list of the COVR 2022 winners, readers can visit the COVR website.
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