Panel of Judges for Baby Hearts Press Inaugural Memoir Award Contest

Amanda Rose Adams
Author of
Heart Warriors: A Family Faces Congenital Heart Disease
Amanda Rose Adams was a graduate student when she and her husband learned
that their first child would be born missing half his heart. Her first book, Heart Warriors, A Family Faces Congenital Heart Disease recounts the journey the Adams took from expecting parents to Heart Warriors.

Adams is a tireless advocate for children and families facing all forms of congenital heart disease, the most lethal and most common birth defect facing children the world over. She founded two nonprofit organizations to both educate parents about rare congenital heart defects and raise critical research dollars.

Amanda Rose Adams was raised in a trailer park in Greeley, Colorado and was the first person in her family to graduate from high school and the only one to attend college. She is currently working on her second book, Lot 109, Tales from the Trailer Park.
Jessica Carmel
Author of
The Hearts of a Girl

Jessica Carmel is a Heart Warrior who has received a heart transplant and a kidney
transplant. This book is her story of triumph over adversity.
Anna Jaworski
Editor & Contributor to  
The Heart of a Mother &
  The Heart of a Father
Anna Jaworski is a wife, mother, the Host of Heart to Heart with Anna: A Podcast for the Congenital Heart Defect Community (CHD), a public speaker and an author. Her first published work was the End note in Critical Care Nurse just a year after her son, Alexander, was born. The piece set the tone for Anna’s future writing.

Anna found herself telling others in the CHD community the same inspiring stories over and over again, therefore she decided to put together a small book of those stories which blossomed into The Heart of a Mother thanks to help from her friend, Jane Hunt, and the Internet.
Naturally the father’s side of the story had to be told. Anna published The Heart of a Father ten years later. Many of the authors are the husbands of the mothers who wrote for the mothers’ book. Anna’s father, Bob Daigneault, was the co-editor of the book.

Anna is currently working on a new book, the next one in the series – The Heart of a Heart Warrior, which Anna hopes to publish in 2019.
Heather Maloy
Author of
I Hate Piñatas: Surviving Life’s Unexpected Surprises
Heather Maloy works full-time as a court reporter in district court and writes sporadically on her blog, Crazy Heart Mama.
She lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and three boys, ages 15, 14 and four. Their middle son, Colman, was born with hypo-plastic left heart syndrome and underwent three heart surgeries in three years.
That experience is chronicled in the memoir, I Hate Piñatas: Surviving Life’s Unexpected Surprises, which was the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Gold Medalist – Best Adult Non-Fiction E-Book.
Kimberly Russell
Author of
In a Heartbeat: A Baby’s Heart, A Surgeon’s Hands,
A Life of Miracles
Kimberly Russell is a Heart Warrior and the author of
In a Heartbeat: A Baby’s Heart, A Surgeon’s Hands, A Life of Miracles.

Travel through Kim’s journey as God blesses her through trials and triumphs of three heart surgeries and four bouts of septal bacteria endocarditis and still living a normal life!