Candy Moulton: Reading the West 3-25-13

Thomas Cobb’s “With Blood in Their Eyes” won the 2013 Spur Award for Best Western Long Novel, and Robert M. Utley’s “Geronimo” won for Best Western Nonfiction-Biography, Western Writers of America has announced.

It is Cobb’s second Spur and Utley’s third. The University of Arizona Press published “With Blood in Their Eyes.” Yale University Press published “Geronimo.”

Since 1953, Western Writers of America has promoted and honored the best in Western literature with the annual Spur Awards, selected by panels of judges. Awards, for material published last year, are given for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West. Previous winners include Elmer Kelton, Lucia St. Clair Robson and Larry McMurtry.

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Winners and finalists in 17 categories will be honored June 25-29 at the WWA convention in Las Vegas, Nev.

Will Bagley, Nancy Plain and Red Shuttleworth all won their third Spurs, with Bagley’s “With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: Trails to the Mining West, 1849-1852” (University of Oklahoma Press) for Best Western Nonfiction-Historical, Plain’s “Light on the Prairie: Solomon D. Butcher, Photographer of Nebraska’s Pioneer Days” (University of Nebraska Press) for Best Western Nonfiction-Juvenile and Shuttleworth’s “Johnny Ringo” (Riverhouse) for Best Western Poem.

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Brett Cogburn’s “Panhandle” (Pinnacle) won for Best First Novel, and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” claimed Best Western Drama Script.

Other winners:

Short Novel: “Tucker’s Reckoning” by Matthew Mayo (New American Library).

Juvenile Fiction: “Wide Open” by Larry Bjornson (Penguin Group).

Storyteller Award (illustrated children’s book): “Pecos Bill Invents the 10-Gallon Hat” by author Kevin Strauss and illustrator David Harrington (Pelican).

Mass Market Paperback: “The Coyote Tracker” by Larry Sweazy (Berkley).

Audiobook: “Ring of Fire” by Cotton Smith, (Books in Motion).

Nonfiction-Contemporary: “Desert Reckoning: A Town Sheriff, a Mojave Hermit, and the Biggest Manhunt in Modern California History” by Deanne Stillman (Nation Books).

Short Fiction Story: “The Hog Whisperer” by John Mort (Flint Hills Review)

Short Nonfiction: “Marathoner Louis Tewanima and the Continuity of Hopi Running, 1908-1912” by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert (Western Historical Quarterly).

Documentary Script: “The Dust Bowl” by Dayton Duncan (Florentine Films/PBS).

Song (TIE): “Texas is Burnin’” by Jim Jones (Jim Jones Music) and “Any Name Will Do” by Mary Kaye (Knaphus Enterprises).

Finalists for the awards are as follow:

Best Western Long Novel

The Orchardist, Amanda Coplin, HarperCollins

Country of the Bad Wolfes, James Carlos Blake, Cinco Puntos Press

Best Western Short Novel

Lonesome Animals, Bruce Holbert, Counterpoint Press

City of Rocks, Michael Zimmer, Five Star Publishing

Best Western First Novel

Wide Open, Larry Bjornson, Penguin Group

The Orchardist, Amanda Coplin, HarperCollins

Best Western Juvenile Fiction

Blooming Prairie, Candace Simar, North Star Press of St. Cloud

And There I’ll Be A Soldier, Johnny D. Boggs, Five Star Publishing

Storyteller Award

The Adventures of Buffalo Joe and The Blackbird With the Broken Wing, written and illustrated by Jamie Anne Blake, Homestead Publishing

Big Buckaroo and Moose, The Cow Dog, Rachelle “Rocky” Gibbons, illustrated by Jason Hutton, Tate Publishing

Best Western Mass Market Paperback

Redemption: Hunters, James Reasoner, Berkley

The Secret of Lodestar, Tim Champlin, Berkley

Best Western Poem

“Night Singer, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico,” Steve Dieffenbacher, Wordcraft of Oregon

“Nat Maringo,” Robert Brown, Brave New Genre Inc.

Best Western Audiobook

Trouble in Texas, Tom Nichols, Books in Motion

Best Western Nonfiction-Historical

Doreen Chaky, Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers on the Upper Missouri, 1854-1868, The Arthur H. Clark Company

Joan Nabseth Stevenson, Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter and Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, University of Oklahoma Press

Best Western Nonfiction-Contemporary

Michael W. Childers, Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement, University Press of Kansas

Ruben Martinez, Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company

Best Western Nonfiction-Biography

Paul L. Hedren, Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford Reports the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War, South Dakota State Historical Society Press

Catherine Holder Spude, “That Fiend in Hell”: Soapy Smith in Legend, University of Oklahoma Press

Best Western Short Fiction Story

Susan K. Salzer, “The Saint of Pox Island,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Lori Van Pelt, “The Day Delgado Rode In,” Outlaws and Lawmen: La Frontera Publishing Presents the American West

Best Western Short Nonfiction

Paul Andrew Hutton, “Libbie Custer: ‘A Wounded Thing Must Hide’,” Wild West

James E. Potter, “‘Wearing the Hempen Neck-Tie’: Lynching in Nebraska, 1858-1919,” Nebraska History

Best Western Nonfiction-Juvenile

Kay Moore, The Great Bicycle Experiment: The Army’s Historic Black Bicycle Corps, 1896-97, Mountain Press Publishing Company

Lois Ruby, Strike!: Mother Jones & the Colorado Coal Field War, Filter Press

Best Western Drama Script

Bill Kerby, Ted Mann, and Ronald Parker, Hatfields & McCoys, Thinkfactory Media/History Channel

Graham Yost, Elmore Leonard, Dave Andron, Fred Golan, Benjamin Cavell, Taylor Elmore, Jon Worley, Nichelle D. Tramble, Ryan Farley, Ingrid Escajeda, VJ Boyd, Justified, Third Season, FX Network

Best Western Song

Jerry Faires, “The Last Real Cowboy in Old Santa Fe,” Silversmith Records