ECW Honors Keeney with Stevenson Award

Emerging Civil War has selected Sarah Keeney of Savas Beatie, LLC, as the recipient of this year’s Brig. Gen. Thomas Greely Stevenson Award. The Stevenson Award is presented to an individual or organization in recognition of outstanding service to ECW.

“Sarah is the person who makes sure books in the Emerging Civil War Series end up in readers’ hands,” explains Editor-in-Chief Chris Mackowski. “She serves as Savas Beatie’s primary contact with ECW. She works with us to develop books, create the marketing for them, and shepherd them through production and into distribution.”

Mackowski pointed out that the past year and a half has been especially challenging because of COVID (see this July 2020 post for more on that). “The pandemic hit independent publishers hard, and that was as true for Savas Beatie was it was for any other small publisher,” Mackowski says. “That meant we all had to take a break from publishing in order to weather the storm. That, in turn, created a backlog for projects, which we are just now starting to get cleared out. Sarah was instrumental in helping get all our projects back on track and out the door.”

ECW has produced six softcovers and two hardcovers since pandemic restrictions loosened, Mackowski points out. “This has kept Sarah especially busy!” he says.

Keeney lives in California and graduated from Cal Poly with a journalism degree. She has worked as the marketing director for Savas Beatie from the beginning in 2004. Since then, she’s been involved in many different day-to-day operations of the business, including shepherding more than 300 books from production to your bookshelf.

Past recipients of the Stevenson Award include Jack Melton of Civil War News, C-SPAN, historian Gregory A. Mertz, Sylvia Frank Rodrigue of Southern Illinois University Press, and publisher Ted Savas.

Three generations: Sarah Keeney (center) with her father and son at Lee’s HQ in Gettysburg


4 Responses to ECW Honors Keeney with Stevenson Award

  1. Sarah Keeney deserves this award and I am so glad she is the recipient this year. Could not go to a nicer, more deserving person.

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