Boulder News

Western Book Roundup

Awards for Kim Barnes and Jana Richman and a Big Book Deal for Nick Arvin

By Jenny Shank, 10-07-09

Kim Barnes, photo by Scott M. Barrie.

I have a lot of good news to report this week about regional writers:

• Last week Pen Center USA announced that Moscow, Idaho’s Kim Barnes has won their award for Fiction for her novel A Country Called Home. (A complete list of winners is here.) Conveniently for those who may have missed this absorbing, lyrical novel, the paperback edition just hit bookstores last week.  Last year I spoke to Barnes about her inspiration for the book and her difficulty with the term “regionalist,” among other topics.

Pen USA will also honor Elmore Leonard with a lifetime achievement award.  According to the organization’s website, “In a career spanning 60 years, Leonard has published 43 novels and numerous short stories, creating a distinct literary style that has delighted readers and influenced a new generation of writers.”

• The winners of the Willa Awards for “for outstanding literature featuring women’s stories set in the West” were announced recently in Los Angeles.  Jana Richman won in the contemporary fiction category for her novel The Last Cowgirl.  (A complete list of winners is here.) I spoke with Richman last year about the Utah environmental issues that fuel her fiction.

• Harper Perennial will publish Denver writer and engineer Nick Arvin‘s new novel, The Reconstructionist, in the fall of 2010.  According to Publisher’s Marketplace, the book follows “a forensic investigator who specializes in car crash sites, and who enters a haunted affair with the wife of his mentor in the profession,” and the sale was “a six-figure deal.” Fox has purchased the rights to make the story into a TV series.  I spoke with Arvin in 2007 about his first novel, Articles of War, which was a One Book, One Denver selection.

• Book festival season in the West continues to roll along, with the Casper College Lit Fest to be held from October 8 through 10.  William Powers, Tim Sandlin, Greg Pape, and Linda Hasselstrom will present workshops and readings. The people at the Wyoming Arts Blog encourage people not to let swine flu fears keep them away from the festivities.

• I was too busy covering the Mountains & Plains Independent Bookseller Association trade show last week to mention this, but it’s not too late to catch the final day of the Hemingway Celebration at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Tonight Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner Michael Dahlie will read from A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center in Moscow (7:30 p.m.). 
Speaking of Kim Barnes, she had this to say about Hemingway’s Idaho legacy in a press release related to this event:

“It’s not just Hemingway’s brilliant craft that we in Idaho appreciate – it’s his characters’ connection to landscape and the rhythms of the natural world.  To perpetuate Hemingway’s deep attention to the art of the story and to draw inspiration as he did from Idaho’s wild beauty is why so many of us choose to live and teach here, and why a large number of our students come here to study. It’s not just our legacy – it’s our literary lineage.”

• And speaking of Hemingway: Tucson-based writer Tom Miller recently wrote a funny and fascinating recollection of a Hemingway-themed trip to Cuba for the L.A. Times, “Off The Shelf: The day Hemingway’s Nobel Prize came out of hiding.” Miller, who has traveled extensively in Cuba and has written and edited several books about the country, including Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro’s Cuba, was hired as a guide for the actress Mariel Hemingway, whose husband was making a documentary about her pilgrimage to Cuba to see the places her grandfather had spent time in.  Miller writes:

“My most daunting task was to convince Cuba’s Catholic Church to take Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Medallion out of hiding so Mariel could see it. When Ernest won the 23-karat gold medal, he wanted to give it to the people of Cuba, off whose north coast his novel “The Old Man and the Sea” is set. Rather than turn the medallion over to the Batista government, he placed it in the custody of the Catholic Church for display at the sanctuary at El Cobre, a small town outside Santiago de Cuba on the island’s southeast coast.”

Miller eventually does get to commune with Hemingway’s Nobel Medallion, which is lodged, unceremoniously, in a manila envelope.

• Kevin Canty will read from his sharp, funny short story collection Where the Money Went at Fact & Fiction in Missoula on October 9 (7 p.m.).

• The Wyoming Arts Blog also noted that Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer just appointed Henry Real Bird as the state’s third poet laureate, and offered this bio of the poet:

“Real Bird lives on the O-W Ranch in Big Horn County with his wife and children. In addition to his writing and ranching, he raises champion bucking horses. He has published a dozen children’s books and a poetry book, “Where Shadows are Born”, and has recorded a CD, “Rivers of Horse.” He was featured in the award-winning documentary “Why the Cowboy Sings” and won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.”

• Jenny Miller, a fellow former Rocky Mountain News book reviewer, has started a new children’s book review blog.  Check out her recent review of Otis by Loren Long, Who Wants to Be a Poodle I Don’t by Lauren Child, and many more.

• Finally, Maria’s Bookshop in Durango is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month.  Shawna Bethell of the Durango Telegraph described the store as “a well-reputed hub of the Four Corners region” and observed that the “southwest aura” of the bookstore is “palpable”: “Walk into the shop and it’s palpable: rich, golden woodwork, Western sunlight streaming through the large windows, and the broad selection of native and Southwest regional titles that grace the spines of the books. Maria’s is symbolic of all the Four Corners represents – and local writers support that.” (Via Twitter.com/Joebfoster.) Maria’s Bookshop will celebrate its 25th on Saturday, October 17, offering a 25% discount and prize giveaways throughout the day.

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

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