Bethel Park author wins Pittsburgh TAZ award
For the past ten years, Cheryl Elaine Williams has been a volunteer docent at the Oliver Miller Homestead in South Park.
The experience of interpreting life on the Pennsylvania frontier has “seeped into her bones” and gave her the feeling of how labor intensive living a life in hinterlands in the late 1700s really was. It also gave her fodder and creative nourishment for writing an historic young adult novel set in late 1700s Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The book, “Eden on the Frontier,” the story of a 17-year-old girl from a Scotch-Irish family enduring the hardships of life on the fringes of the civilized world, won the author a first place TAZ Award – short for The Author’s Zone – in the Young Adult category at the fourth annual Author Awards ceremony Oct. 19 at the Rivers Club in Pittsburgh.
Williams, who writes under the name Cheryle Williams, admits the book, published by Desert Breeze in Castaic, California is based somewhat on the Oliver Miller family, who settled on land where the homestead now stands, although not character for character. The author also said she introduces wealthier families roughly based on the Nevilles at Woodville Plantation as well as a free black man and a Native American freighter who traded goods across the mountains from the east.
“I’m aiming for an audience that likes to read about young women of an earlier period when faith, family and community were important,” she said. “The TAZ prize is an affirmation that I’m writing literary-quality fiction, and it’s important to me. I’ve worked hard to develop skills over the years by going to writers’ conferences and exchanging ideas with fellow authors.”
TAZ judges are writers, editors, teachers and authors from both Pittsburgh and New York. The keynote speaker at the awards ceremony and dinner was Barbara Reynolds, seven-time author, co-author of the recent memoir “Coretta Scott King: My Life, My Love, My Legacy” and the first African-American woman on the editorial board of USA Today.
TAZ has been sponsoring the competition for the past four years through the Community College of Allegheny County. The competition is open to all writers with ties to the Pittsburgh area or who’ve written a book on a topic that deals with Western Pennsylvania.
Williams’ prize-winning book, which the author feels is her best to date, is available at amazon.com and at barnesandnoble.com. Signed copes are also available at the Oliver Miller Homestead, located off Corrigan Drive by the Circle in South Park and open from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. each Sunday through Dec. 3.
Williams will also sign books at the Christmas Craft Show from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 4 at the Christ United Methodist Church in Bethel Park.
The author first started as a romance writer in 1980 after reading Katherine Falk’s “How to Write a Romance and Get It Published.” Twenty years ago, after joining PennWriters, an organization with about 400 members across the state with the goal of helping writers of all levels, she began writing short stories. Ten years ago, several of her short stories were published in Weekly World News. Some of her short sci-fi stories were also published in The Sun. When both publishers later folded, she began writing longer works like her young adult novels.
A Penn State graduate with a major in Russian language and literature and teaching credentials from the University of Pittsburgh, Williams student-taught at Taylor-Allderdice in Pittsburgh and taught briefly at a parochial school in Homestead before accepting a position with the U.S. Postal Service, where she worked for 25 years before retiring.
Her first book, an angel fantasy written in 2014 and titled “Stairway to Heaven,” is about a 16-year-old girl who dies in an accident, then climbs a stairway to heaven and tells of her experiences in the celestial sphere. Another novel, “Stranger in the Province of Joy” is about two Pittsburgh area teens from different socio-economic classes who fall in love then deal with the stress they encounter in high school.
Williams has also authored two religious works published by Barbour Books of Uhrichsville, Ohio under the titles “3 Minute Devotions for Dog Lovers” and “3 Minute Devotions for Cat Lovers.”
At the moment, the author is writing a sequel to her prize winning historical young adult novel. Expected to be released sometime in June, the book is titled “Grace on the Frontier.”