RWA Emma Merritt Service Award

The RWA Emma Merritt Service Award is presented for the accumulated body of work a member has contributed as a volunteer to RWA. The award is not only for service to individual chapters, but is intended to honor major commitments of service to RWA. A member may receive the RWA Emma Merritt Service Award only once in a lifetime. In the past, the RWA Emma Merritt Service Award has also been known as the Golden Rose and the National Service Award.

Submit Emma Merritt Service Award Nomination

2021 RWA Emma Merritt Service Award Recipient

Alyssa Day
Alyssa Day is the pen name (and dark and tortured alter ego) of author Alesia Holliday. As Alyssa, she is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author with more than a million books sold, and she writes the Warriors of Poseidon and Cardinal Witches paranormal romance series and the Tiger’s Eye Mysteries, a paranormal mystery series. As Alesia, she writes comedies that make readers snort things out of their noses, and is the author of the award-winning memoir about military families during war-time deployments: Email to the Front. She has won many awards for her writing, including Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award for outstanding romance fiction and the RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Paranormal Romance novel of 2012.

Past Emma Merritt Service Award Recipients

  • 2020: No award given
  • 2019: Dee Davis
  • 2018: Leslie Kelly
  • 2017: Cindy Kirk
  • 2016: Nikki Enlow
  • 2015: Lorraine Heath
  • 2014: Trish Milburn
  • 2013: Nancy Haddock
  • 2012: Laura Hayden
  • 2011: Michelle Monkou
  • 2010: Jennifer Crusie
  • 2009: Sherry Lewis
  • 2008: Linda Winstead Jones
  • 2007: Gayle Wilson
  • 2006: Shirley Hailstock
  • 2005: Carol Prescott
  • 2004: Alicia Rasley
  • 2003: Debra Dixon
  • 2001: Libby Hall
  • 2000: Claudia Yates
  • 1999: Janis Reams Hudson
  • 1998: Robin Lee Hatcher
  • 1997: JoAnn Ferguson
  • 1996: Christine Pacheco
  • 1995: Rita Gallagher, Cathie Linz, Debbie Macomber, & Karan Richardson
  • 1994: Margaret Brownley, Patt Marr, & Maggie Osborne
  • 1993: Darlene Layman, Harold Lowry, aka Leigh Greenwood, & Nora Simpson
  • 1992: Emma Merritt
  • 1991: Kathy Clark & Jeanne Triner
  • 1990: Marian Jones
  • 1989: Jan Milella
  • 1988: Jasmine Cresswell & Selwyn Young
  • 1987: Linda Nusser
  • 1986: JoAnn Ross
  • 1985: Marianne Willman

 

Historical Note: from 1985 through 1989 the award was known as the Golden Rose. From 1990 through 1995 it was known as the National Service Award.