Missoula News

Western Book Roundup

Ruth McLaughlin’s “Bound Like Grass” Wins the Montana Book Award

By Jenny Shank, 3-02-11

This year’s Montana Book Award winner is Ruth McLaughlin’s moving memoir, Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains (University of Oklahoma Press). The prize committee praised it for its “acute observation,” honesty, and beautiful writing. The committee also named four honor books published in 2010:

Everything by Kevin Canty (Nan A. Talese)

Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Resnick (University of Nebraska Press)

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)

Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountains by Dan Flores (University of Oklahoma Press)

The winners will be honored at the Montana Library Association conference in Billings on April 7. McLaughlin will do a victory lap at several bookstores in Montana: in Bozeman at the Country Bookshelf on March 29, in Hamilton at Chapter One Bookstore on March 30, and in Missoula at Fact and Fiction on March 31. All readings are at 7 p.m.

• Alan Heathcock will celebrate the launch of his debut short story collection Volt in Boise at The Linen Building on March 4 with a big old literary jamboree. Anthony Doerr (whose story collection Memory Wall is currently a finalist for The Story Prize) will host the event, Boise band Hillfolk Noir will perform, donations will be collected for The Cabin, a literary center in Idaho, and Heathcock will read and sign books of course. (6:30 p.m., free.) Volt received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, among other accolades. Look for my review next week.

• Benjamin Percy will swing through Denver on March 3 and read from his novel The Wilding (one of my picks for the best Western books of last year) at the CU Denver St. Cajetan’s Center (1190 9th St.), 5:30 p.m.

• Publishers Weekly named its finalists for the 19th annual PW Bookstore of the Year Award, which will be given at BookExpo America in May. The four finalists include three Western independent bookstores: Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Colo., The Kings English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Village Books in Bellingham, Wash. (Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville and Downers Grove, Ill. also made the shortlist.)

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