Wyoming Writers Roll On & Western Heritage Awards Announced

By Jenny Shank, 3-17-10

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for: two weeks ago I asked New West readers to vote on what book I should review next.  I was delighted and relieved when several people voted.  The winner, with four votes, is Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West by Marcia Meredith Hensley.  I’ll review it next Monday.  And since the voting was so tight, I plan to review the runner-up, How it Looks Going Back by Doris Knowles Pulis, in a few weeks as well. 

As for the other two books: they’ll go back on my guilt pile, and I’ll get to them as soon as I can.  Every time I open the cabinet where I keep my un-reviewed books, the books scream, “Pick me!  Pick me!” I’m okay with it, but it frightens the kids.

• Wyofile has an in-depth feature by Susan Gray Gose on Wyoming mystery and thriller novelist C.J. Box.  Gray Gose writes that Box “cranks out 1,000 words a day,” “publishes two books a year,” and that one of his novels could be adapted into a screenplay soon:

“The producers of About Schmidt (the 2002 New Line Cinema comedy) bought the rights to Blue Heaven. While many optioned books languish, this one seems to be moving forward. It’s received financing, and actors Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin and Joe Pesci have signed on.”

• In the past few weeks I’ve reviewed a cavalcade of books by Wyoming authors Alyson Hagy, Mark Spragg, and Laura Bell.  (We’ll have a review of C.J. Box’s new thriller, Nowhere To Run, one of these days, too.) I thought I was finished with Wyoming for a while, but then I learned that a new story collection by University of Wyoming creative writing teacher Brad Watson, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, will hit bookstores next week.

Watson boasts some major accomplishments: Last year I mentioned his story “Visitation,” which appeared in The New Yorker.  And Watson’s first novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award.  I’m not sure if Watson was in Wyoming when he published that book, but now that he’s been drinking the Laramie water for a while, his literary output can only get better, right?  (And could somebody send me a bottle of that stuff?  I could use the writing mojo.)

• The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City will celebrate its 49th Annual Western Heritage Awards on April 17.  The museum has been honoring Western achievement in literature, music, and film and television since 1961.  This year’s literary winners:

The Sundown Chaser by Dusty Richards (Fiction)

The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story by Elliott West (Nonfiction)

The Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A Retrospective of Paintings and Sculpture by Joan Carpenter Troccoli (Art Book)

Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby by Craig Varjabedian (Photography)

Bull Rider by Suzanne Morgan Williams (Juvenile Book)

Work Is Love Made Visible by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish (Poetry)

“‘My Heart Now Has Become Changed to Softer Feelings,’ A Northern Cheyenne Woman and Her Family Remember the Long Journey Home” by John H. Monnett (Outstanding Magazine Article)

• While promoting The Last Song, Nicholas Sparks’ novel/movie Miley Cyrus vehicle, Sparks told Anthony Breznican of USA TODAY that Cormac McCarthy is “Horrible.” Of Blood Meridian, Sparks observed, “This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written.” (Via Twitter.com/ChangingHands.)

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