Utah News

Western Book Roundup

Anthony Doerr Extends Winning Streak and New Mexico Will Star as Wyoming in ‘Longmire’ TV Pilot

By Jenny Shank, 4-13-11

Craig Johnson.

Boise’s Anthony Doerr continued his winning streak last weekend, collecting the The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for his story “The Deep,” which came with a £30,000 prize. (Last month he won the $20,000 Story Prize for his collection Memory Wall). Doerr spoke with the Boise Weekly just before the win, and noted that the award ceremony was to be held in the Great Hall of Christ Church College at Oxford University, “where they film the great hall of Hogwarts.” It’s like I’ve been telling you these past months--literary Boise is en fuego.

• Craig Johnson reported in his newsletter that filming will begin this month on a television pilot based on his Walt Longmire mysteries. Johnson notes that the crew is filming in the “Las Vegas/Taos/Santa Fe area of New Mexico, since it was deemed that Wyoming’s weather was too unstable for shooting a series and had too much snow to appear to be spring.” The show, for Warner Horizon and A&E, will be called “Longmire.” Johnson explains if the pilot gets picked up, they will film a dozen episodes for the first season, “borrowing chunks of the novels, but following their own tales because of the amount of stories they need to tell and the time constraints in which to tell them.” (Via Wyoming Arts Blog.)

• Novelist Chris Abani will be the keynote speaker at the 2011 Mountain West Arts Conference, to be held May 5 at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City, Utah. (Via Wyoming Arts Blog.)

• Former Rocky Mountain News journalist J.R. Moehringer just sold his first novel. According to Publishers Marketplace, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the excellent memoir The Tender Bar will write a “historical fiction based on the rollicking life of Willie Sutton, the most beloved bank robber in American history, who robbed 100 banks between 1925 and 1950, making off with two million dollars, and broke out of three escape-proof prisons, all without firing a single shot.” Hyperion will publish the as-yet-untitled book in Fall 2012.

• The Smashwords Blog crunched the numbers to find out what states purchase the largest amount of eBooks per capita—it turns out readers in the West are some ebooking fools—Alaska buys the most per capita, followed by North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Montana comes in eighth, followed by Idaho, Washington, and Colorado at ninth, tenth and eleventh respectively. Why have readers in the West been early adopters of eBooks?  If you have any theories, please share them in the comments.

• The Boulder Book Store announced that beginning in May, it will charge a fee of between $5-$10 for all of its readings. Tickets will include a discount on the purchase of the featured book. David Bolduc, the owner of the bookstore explained the decision in a press release:

“More and more, we compete with other bookstores vying to host popular authors. Publishers place certain expectations on us when we host events, and so in order to continually attract authors, we must fulfill these expectations. Oftentimes, in return for sending an author to a bookstore, publishers expect us to attract a certain number of people and sell a certain number of books.”

Philip Connors, author of the memoir Fire Season, will speak at the Boulder Book Store on May 2 (7:30 p.m., $8). Proceeds from the event will benefit the Fourmile Canyon Fire Department. Look for my review of the book next week.

• I’m heading to the Evil Companions Literary Award honoring Ted Conover tomorrow, held at the swanky Oxford Hotel in Denver, and I’ll report on the festivities next week. As journalism assignments go, it’s a lot cushier than hopping trains with hoboes or going undercover as a guard at Sing Sing, both of which Conover has done.

Please follow me on Twitter and with any regional books news or events.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.