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National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
1700 NE 63rd Street
Oklahoma City, OK 73111
(405) 478-2250
(405) 478-4714 (fax)
National Cowboy Museum
March 6, 2007
National Cowboy Museum Announces Wrangler Award Literary Winners
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum® in Oklahoma City announces the 2006 winners in the literary categories of the prestigious Western Heritage Awards to be held in the Museum's Sam Noble Special Events Center April 21, 2007. The coveted Wrangler Award, a stunning bronze sculpture of a cowboy on horseback, will be presented in 14 categories of music, film, television and literature in the Western genre. Literary categories include Western novel, juvenile, poetry, nonfiction and photography books, and magazine article.
Broken Trail written by Alan Geoffrion, and published by Fulcrum Press, won the Outstanding Western Novel. As a bonus, Geoffrion's novel, which was broadcast on AMC (starring Robert Duvall), also will be honored at the Western Heritage Awards as "Outstanding Television Feature Film." In this heartfelt story, a "bowed and bandy-legged old cowboy," Print Ritter, is a man with miles of dusty trail under his well-worn belt. When his sister dies and leaves all she owns to him, Print feels it's only right to take her estranged son under his wing.
The two horseman–one old, one young–set off to seek their fortune on a last, long drive across the West. But the simple rhythm and reverie of trail life doesn't last, and before long they find themselves risking everything to save five kidnapped Chinese girls from a life of prostitution. Thus begins an epic and perilous journey that changes forever the fates of these young women, their unlikely guardians, and the other characters they meet along the way.
Outstanding Nonfiction Book winner is The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story Of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan and published by Houghton Mifflin Company. Egan, a national enterprise reporter for the New York Times is the author of four books and the recipient of several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.
The Worst Hard Time is an epic story of blind hope and endurance almost beyond belief; it also is a riveting tale of the dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression when nothing like it had ever been seen before or since and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told.. Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He tells the story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
Into The West: From Reconstruction To The Final Days Of The American Frontier, written by James M. McPherson, Ph.D., won Outstanding Juvenile Book. Published by Atheneum Books For Young Readers/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, Into The West is the story of the nation's attempts to bind its Civil War wounds through Reconstruction with the triumphant and tragic taming of the American frontier.
The story contains personal narratives from settlers and soldiers as well as profiles and accounts of the actions of many historical luminaries involved in Reconstruction and the movement west, such as President Andrew Johnson, General George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Geronimo, and Wild Bill Hickock.
Dr. McPherson also explores the role of women and the development of the arts on the frontier, the role and legend of the cowboy, and the destruction of the Native American way of life. The author was recognized with the Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. He is a professor at Princeton University.
Written by Bruce Roseland and published by the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies/North Dakota State University, The Last Buffalo won Outstanding Poetry Book for 2006. "The title The Last Buffalo is meant as a metaphor for what I see is as a rapidly changing and apparently disappearing way of life,"said Roseland. "We, the descendants of the prairie settlers, are perhaps like the wild buffalo, unknowing and/or puzzled about the forces that are shaping and changing our environment from the familiar past to an uncertain future."
Roseland earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of North Dakota. He is the fourth generation operator of his family's farm in Seneca, South Dakota, and ponders the whats and whys of making the decision to become possibly the last generation to husband the family homestead.
Outstanding Western Photography Book is Lasting Light ~ 125 Years Of Grand Canyon Photography by Stephen Trimble, published by Northland Publishing. Lasting Light not only celebrates more than 125 years of Grand Canyon photography, it includes captivating profiles of 23 of the finest Grand Canyon photographers.
An accomplished writer and Ansel Adams Award-winning photographer, Trimble provides insightful narrative that brings to life the relationship between artist and subject and portrays an American treasure in a way not many are fortunate to experience. He has received significant awards for his photography, his nonfiction, and his fiction–including The High Desert Museum's Chiles Award for promoting "thoughtful management of the natural resources of the Intermountain West"; and a Frank Waters Southwest Writing Award for fiction. As a writer, editor, and photographer Trimble has published 20 books. His bedrock focus is the land–Western wildlands and natural history.
Outstanding Magazine Article is "Six Days Ablaze," written by John R. Erickson and published by American Cowboy Magazine. On Sunday, March 12, 2006, hot, dry howling winds in the Texas Panhandle stirred flames that lit up the entire southern horizon and appeared to be 50 miles long. Twelve people and 10,000 cattle died in the worst fire to ever sweep through the Lone Star state. In "Six Days Ablaze," a two-part article, Erickson records one rancher's localized record of the incident, a snapshot of events that were replicated across a million acres.
Erickson, a former cowboy and ranch manager, is gifted with a storyteller's knack for spinning a yarn. In 1982, he was working out in the cold with eight inches of snow on the ground. When two rejection slips from New York publishers arrived in the mail, he knew he had to make a decision. He had a wife, two kids and another one on the way, so with $2,000 in borrowed money, Erickson started his own publishing company, appropriately named Maverick Books. His popular book series featuring Hank the Cowdog also are on tape and available in Spanish.
Emcee for the 2007 Western Heritage Awards is four-time academy award-nominated actor, director and producer Ed Harris. Celebrity awards presenters include Ernest Borgnine, Robert Carradine, Brad Johnson, Michael Martin Murphey, Buck Taylor, Don Edwards, Red Steagall, Waddie Mitchell, and John Wayne's granddaughter, Anita La Cava Swift. Actors Sam Elliott and the late Steve McQueen will be inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers.
For news releases about Western Heritage Awards activities, celebrity hosts, category honorees and halls of fame inductees visit www.nationalcowboymuseum.org.
Tickets for the Friday, April 20 Jingle-Jangle Mingle mixer is $20. Admission to the cocktail reception and awards banquet on Saturday, April 21 is $140. The event is open to the public and reservations can be secured by calling (405) 478-2250, Ext. 219.
To request an entry form for the next Western Heritage Awards competition contact Lynda Haller at (405) 478-2250, Ext. 221 or lyndahaller@nationalcowboymuseum.org.
Nationally accredited, the Museum is located in Oklahoma City's Adventure District at the junction of I-44 and I-35. America's Premier Western Heritage Museum™ offers annual memberships that include year-round admission for six people.
Editor's Note: For related photos, visit National Cowboy Museum. Click on Western Heritage Awards. After accepting Use Agreement, select photo and follow instructions at the top of the page.
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