Candace Toft sadly passed away on May 22, 2015.

She won her first award in 1999 for Best Personal Essay in University Publications, Western Region; the piece, entitled Not Just Another Cancer Story had been submitted on behalf of the National University periodical Insight and was later published in Coping Magazine, under the title, The Love That Sees Me Through. In 2000, her novel A Mingled Yarn won first runner-up in the San Diego Book Awards unpublished novel. In 2002 Candace won runner-up for poetry Chapbook with Poems to My Mother, and for The Trap in the category of Novelist Grant Award. In 2004, she, along with her co-author, Gordon Ooley, won first place in San Diego Book Awards Unpublished novel category for Emergence.