In this week’s Friday Five! (plus one) we’re celebrating some of our extraordinary award-winning authors. With book awards season upon us, the BookSparksPR staff would like to take five minutes and give a special shout-out to six award-winning authors. And the awards go to…

What’s on my iPod: Just Can’t Get Enough by The Black Eyed Peas
What I’m reading: Crumble by Fleur Philips
The last person I followed on Twitter: @Booklist_RVnuk

1. The touching novel Finding Emma by author Steena Holmes was crowned a winner of  the 2012 National Indie Excellence Award for best fiction.

2. Jennifer Gooch Hummer’s incredible award-winning novel Girl Unmoored was chosen as a 2012 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Finalist in the YA category and is a winner of 10 other awards and honors including the winner of Cross Genre, National Indie Excellence Book Awards.

3. Author Kathleen Shoop‘s bestselling historical fiction novel, The Last Letter is a winner of multiple awards and honors including the 2011 USA Best Books Awards, for best Fiction–Western.

4. Meg Akabas‘s revolutionary parenting book 52 Weeks of Parenting Wisdom was chosen as a finalist for the 2012 Foreword Book of the Year Award in the Family and Relationships category.

5. Celebrated author Michael Lowenthal‘s groundbreaking novel The Paternity Test is a finalist in the 2013 Lambda Literary Awards.

6. Fleur Philips‘s gut-wrenching novel I Am Lucky Bird was chosen as a 2011 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year finalist in the Adult Fiction category.