Western Book Roundup

Utah and Oregon Book Awards Announced and Hooray, I Sold My Novel!

By Jenny Shank, 11-04-09

As I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions over the years I’ve written the Roundup, when I’m not reading other people’s books, I’m trying to write my own, and after many, many years of effort, I have some good news: my first novel, The Ringer, will be published by The Permanent Press in 2011.  I am delighted about it.  Now I just need to edit the book and figure out how to convince people to read it.  (Beg?  Bribe?  Cajole?) Check out my new website for more information.

• The winners of the Utah and Oregon Book Awards were announced recently.  In Utah, the winners included David McGlynn in fiction for The End of the Straight and Narrow, Stephen Trimble in nonfiction for Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America, and in the poetry category, Craig Arnold won the award posthumously for his collection Made Flesh.  Ben Fulton of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote in greater detail about all the winners.

Last week, Poets & Writers covered the annual Oregon Book Awards, which went to poet Matthew Dickman for All-American Poem, Jon Raymond in fiction for Livability: Stories, and state attorney general John Kroger in creative nonfiction for Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves.  I recently wrote about some Western short-story-to-film adaptations, and Poets & Writers mentioned that two films based on Raymond’s short stories have been produced:

“Raymond…has two film credits to his name, both based on stories from the book. Wendy and Lucy, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, was adapted from his story “Train Choir,” and Old Joy, a 2006 Sundance feature starring innovative musician Will Oldham, finds its origins in the story of the same title. Raymond is also the author of a novel, The Half-Life (Bloomsbury, 2004).”

• The Center of the American West at the University of Colorado will be involved in two notable events this week.  On November 5, center director Patricia Nelson Limerick will discuss the topic “Immigration and the Practical Majority?” with Helen Thorpe, author of one of my favorite recent books, Just Like Us.  In her riveting book, Thorpe, the wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, follows four Mexican teenage girls as they finish high school and college.  The research for the book took Thorpe to some unusual places, such as a Mexican dance club in Denver, and to rural Mexico to visit one of the girl’s mothers. The discussion, sponsored by CU-Boulder’s Center for Humanities and the Arts, will take place in the British Studies room on the 5th floor of Norlin Library on the CU Campus (4 p.m.).

On November 12, the Center for the American West will mark the publication of a new book, Remedies for a New West, with a reading and discussion (Room 250, Eaton Humanities, 7 p.m.).  According to a press release, the book is a “wide-ranging collection of essays…intended to provoke both thought and action…exploring a variety of issues facing the American West—disappearing Native American languages, deteriorating air quality, suburban sprawl, species loss, grassland degradation, and many others—and suggest steps toward ‘healing.’ More than ‘dealing with’ or ‘solving,’ according to the editors, healing addresses not just symptoms but their underlying causes, offering not just a temporary cure but a permanent one.” Patricia Nelson Limerick, Andrew Cowell, and Sharon K. Collinge edited the book, and several contributors will be on hand to discuss it.  Look for our review of Remedies for a New West soon.

• According to the AP, Annie Proulx has donated her papers, including the early drafts of the story “Brokeback Mountain” to the New York Public Library. (Via Twitter.com/mathitak)

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