Book awards triumph has sequel for local musician

Glenys Scott with her ukulele in her lounge playing for the Zoom broadcast of the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

In 2019, I Would Not Step Back… by Hilary Pedersen and Associated Writers, published by the Phil Lamason Heritage Centre Trust (Inc) in Dannevirke, was judged the winner in the Military category of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the largest international awards programme for independent publishers.

The news broke in late May and had its follow-up when Phil's son John and his wife Debbie, together with Glenys Scott who was instrumental in recording Phil's reminiscences before he died, travelled to Washington DC to receive the awards – a gold medal for winning the Wartime category and a silver medal for placing in the top six of the Biography category.

It was an amazing experience held in the prestigious Mayflower Hotel.

There were also 70 other awards for different categories.

In the aftermath of that celebration, and surrounded by the board and staff of Next Generation Indie Books, Glenys Scott pulled out her ukulele and began singing "This Land Is Your Land" much to the delight of the locals who joined in and a fun evening ensued.

This year's awards event was originally planned to take place at Chicago's Newberry Library, to coincide with the American Library Association Annual Conference, but was moved online because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The winners and finalists were honoured on June 26 in an online event which streamed live on Facebook and zoomed about the world watched by thousands of people in the literary scene.

Much to Glenys's surprise several days before the online event, she was asked to perform on Zoom from her home her rendition of This Land is Your Land as a finale to these awards which she did, thoroughly enjoying the experience and also appreciating catching up with her friends made last year.

She felt the whole experience was kind of surreal but she was pleased to put "I Would Not Step Back…" back in the limelight as she is keen to see the story be made into a film or TV series.

With this in mind, she has written a screenplay which has already received favourable reviews from local publishers and a prominent film maker. While the play still needs refining, she hopes the story of Phil Lamason's heroics will be seen on the screen big or small sometime soon.

Meanwhile, her reception on Zoom was so popular this year there may be a three-peat in 2021!