Sanibel author wins bronze award

Sobczak Sanibel author Charles Sobczak has won a bronze award for his debut non-fiction title, "Alligators, Sharks & Panthers: Deadly Encounters with Florida's Top Predator - Man." The announcement was made May 22 by The Independent Publisher Book Awards based out of Traverse City, Mich. The awards, known as the IPPY Awards, are in their 12th year and in 2008 they received 3,175 entries for more than 60 separate categories.

The bronze award was given for the best non-fiction work in the Southeast United States, a region that includes Florida, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Other regional winners include "The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World, 2008," by Sanibel authors Mike and Julie Neal. National winners include renowned authors such as Jean-Michel Cousteau, as well as winning submissions by MIT and Yale University Press. All winners will received a certificate and a medal May 30 in Los Angeles.

The medal-winning books came from 44 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and U.S. Virgin Islands; 7 Canadian provinces; and 5 countries overseas. This is the third consecutive award for Sobczak. His prior awards include The Patrick Smith Award for Florida Fiction, 2001, for the black comedy, "Way Under Contract, a Florida Story," and a bronze award presented by Foreword Magazine for his third novel, "A Choice of Angels."

"Alligators, Sharks & Panthers" features 26 detailed creative non-fiction accounts of fatal alligator and shark attacks that have occurred in Florida over the past 60 years. The premise of the book is to reverse the traditional predator/prey relationship and explain that mankind's impact on these highly-evolved predators is far more deadly to them than they have ever been to us.

Sobczak is currently working on a fictional memoir titled, "Chain of Fools," which is scheduled for release in the fall of 2008.