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Broward County Court Judge Woody R. Clermont has picked up two national literary honors for his historical nonfiction book, "The Golden Mansaic Age: The Legendary Malian Empire," which was named a 2026 Distinguished Favorite by the NYC Big Book Award and a 2026 Finalist in the African American Nonfiction category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, according to the announcement.

The book centers on Mansa Musa, the 14th-century Malian emperor whose pilgrimage to Mecca became legendary for the sheer volume of gold he carried across the Sahara, a journey said to have affected economies as far away as Cairo and Venice. Drawing on chronicles, oral tradition, and archaeology, the book also traces Sundiata Keita’s founding of the Mali Empire, the rise of Timbuktu as a center of manuscripts and scholarship, and the empire’s eventual decline under Songhai and, later, Moroccan forces. Reader reviews posted to Google Books describe it as weaving oral histories and archaeological research into a narrative-driven account of the empire’s wealth, religion, and politics.

"History becomes more meaningful when we recognize the contributions of civilizations that have too often been overlooked," Clermont said in the announcement. "The Mali Empire reminds us that Africa has a remarkable history of scholarship, economic innovation, leadership, and cultural achievement."

Clermont, who in 2018 became the first Haitian-American male elected to judicial office in Broward County, has published more than 40 books through his own imprint, Woody Clermont Book Publications, covering subjects from law and economics to philosophy and fiction. His educational credentials span ten earned degrees, among them a law degree and a graduate degree in theology from Liberty University completed recently, and he continues advanced study toward a doctoral degree focused on organizational development and innovation. Past recognition for his writing has come from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association, The BookFest, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, among others.

The NYC Big Book Award distinction will be marked at the organization’s 2027 awards gala in the New York City area on April 10, 2027.

Studio CarryOnHarry sees the more interesting story here less in the award itself than in the author: a sitting judge building a parallel career as a working historian of pre-colonial Africa, one book at a time.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.

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Roy Butler, founding pastor of ShoutChurch in Sierra Vista, Arizona, has published a new book examining how his own use of an AI chatbot gradually changed the way he practiced ministry. The book, "Pastoral Formation in the Age of AI: A Pastor’s Confession, Awakening, and Search for Faithful Clarity," is out now through Christian Faith Publishing.

Butler has spent more than twenty-five years in pastoral ministry and serves as a bivocational pastor, meaning he holds outside work alongside his church leadership duties. According to the announcement, he turned to a chatbot initially to help with sermon preparation and ease the workload of running a congregation. Over time, he writes, that practical arrangement reshaped his pastoral work in ways he didn’t notice until later.

Butler’s path to ministry includes service as a United States Army chaplain, which he has said shaped his approach to leadership and his conviction that faith has to hold up under real-world pressure. He holds degrees from Wayland Baptist University and Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

The book’s central argument, as described in the announcement, is not a rejection of AI tools in ministry but a caution about how easily efficiency can substitute for presence. Butler writes about the distance that can open between a pastor and his congregation when a tool handles work that once required direct engagement, and about the reluctance many church leaders feel to admit they’re struggling. "I realized that somewhere between pursuing efficiency and developing dependence on AI, I had drifted from the very essence of what called me to pastoral ministry in the first place," Butler said in the announcement, describing the book as an invitation to other church leaders to examine their own habits before adopting new tools without reflection.

The subject has drawn wider attention in religious circles recently. A Christianity Today piece published around the same period raised similar concerns about AI’s effect on pastoral authority, arguing that a chatbot trained to mimic a preacher’s voice can reproduce the words without carrying any of the pastoral weight behind them. Butler’s book arrives as part of that broader conversation among church leaders about where automation belongs in ministry and where it doesn’t.

"Pastoral Formation in the Age of AI" is available through major booksellers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. For Studio CarryOnHarry, the more interesting story here isn’t one pastor’s chatbot use — it’s that enough church leaders are having this same experience that it’s becoming its own small genre of confession.

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