OK Center for the Book Awards FINALISTS and Honorees announced

Finalist Announced for 2010 Oklahoma Book Awards 

 

David G. Fitzgerald is Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

 

Stan Hoig to be honored with Ralph Ellison Award

Thirty-three books have been chosen as finalists in the Twenty-first annual Oklahoma Book Award competition.  Winners in the categories of fiction, poetry, design/illustration, children/young adult, and non-fiction will be announced at the Oklahoma Book Award banquet on Saturday, April 17, at the Edward L. Gaylord – T. Boone Pickens Oklahoma Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.  Master of ceremonies at the event will be former Miss America, journalist, and author Jane Jayroe.

Sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book, the awards recognize books written the previous year by Oklahomans or about Oklahoma.  This year one 115 books were entered in the competition. 

In addition to the literary awards, photographer David G. Fitzgerald will be presented the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award.  The award is named for the Norman historian Arrell Gibson who served as the first president of the Oklahoma Center for the Book.

Lifelong Oklahoma resident and award-winning photographer David G. Fitzgerald’s career expands over four decades. Fitzgerald’s work began receiving national attention in the late 1970s. In 1979 the coffee-table book Oklahoma was published, the first of many to come featuring his photographs. Books that followed include Ozarks, Israel: Land of Promise, Oklahoma (the Land Run Centennial edition), Mansion Fare, Oklahoma II, Portrait of the Ozarks, Oklahoma Crossroads, Bison: Monarch of the Plains, Cherokee, Chickasaw: Unconquered and Unconquerable, Oklahoma 3, and Cherokee Trail of Tears.

Award winning author and historian Stan Hoig will be honored posthumously with the Ralph Ellison Award. Hoig began his career writing articles and books on the American West in the 1950s. His first book, The Humor of the American Cowboy was published in 1958 and remains in print today. Hoig published a wide variety of articles in magazines and professional journals such as the Chronicles of Oklahoma and Encyclopedia of the American West. Moreover, he had twenty-five books published and listed with the Library of Congress including The Sand Creek Massacre, The Battle of the Washita, Perilous Pursuit: The U.S. Calvary and the Northern Cheyennes, and The Chouteaus: First Family of the Fur Trade.

The following books which are listed in alphabetical order according to the last name of the lead author, designer or illustrator, have been selected as finalists of the 2010 awards.
Children/Young Adult 

 
Annie Glover is Not a Tree Lover by Darleen Bailey Beard, Farrar, Straus, Giroux publisher

For a Girl Becoming by Joy Harjo, The University of Arizona Press

Paris Pan takes the Dare by Cynthea Liu, G.P. Putnam’s Sons publisher

Time of the Witches by Anna Myers, Walker & Company publisher

Chicken Dance by Tammi Sauer, Sterling Publishing Company Inc.

Night Fires by George Edward Stanley, Simon & Schuster/Aladdin Imprint publisher 

Design/Illustration

Lanterns on the Prairie: The Blackfeet Photographs of Walter McClintock by Eric H. Anderson and Karen Hayes-Thumann, University of Oklahoma Press 

 Skirvin by Carl Brune, Full Circle Press

 Roots from the Cherokees, Promises for our Future: The Chronicle of Northeastern State University by Buffy Cooper, Mullerhaus Publishing Group

Willard Stone by Carol Haralson, University of Tulsa/Gilcrease Museum publisher

Sonic: The History of America’s Drive-In by Skip McKinstry, Cottonwood Publications

Where to Sleep by Kandy Radzinski, Sleeping Bear Press

Fiction 

Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness by William Bernhardt, Ballantine Books publisher

Confessions of a Former Rock Queen by Kirk Bjornsgaard, 4RV Publishing

The Sky Took Him by Donis Casey, Poisoned Pen Press

The Wind Comes Sweeping by Marcia Preston, Mira Books publisher

The Yard Dog by Sheldon Russell, Minotaur Books publisher

The Sound of Honor by Jim Stovall, Hawk Publishing 

Non-Fiction

 Sonic: The History of America’s Drive-In by Bob L. Blackburn, Cottonwood Publications

Divided Hearts: The Presbyterian Journey through Oklahoma History by Michael Cassity and Danney Goble, University of Oklahoma Press

Indian Tribes of Oklahoma: A Guide by Blue Clark, University of Oklahoma Press

Coach Tommy Thompson and the Boys of Sequoyah by Patti Dickinson, University of Oklahoma Press

Tar Creek: A History of the Quapaw Indians, the World’s Largest Lead and Zinc Discovery, and the Tar Creek Superfund Site by Larry G. Johnson, Tate Publishing & Enterprises

Choctaw Crime and Punishment, 1884-1907 by Devon Abbott Mihesuah, University of Oklahoma Press

Skirvin  by Jack Money and Steve Lackmeyer, Full Circle Press

Another Hot Oklahoma Night: A Rock and Roll Story by Jeff Moore and

Larry O’Dell, Oklahoma Historical Society publisher

Thomas Gilcrease by Randy Ramer, Carole Klein, Kimberly Roblin, Eric Singleton, Anne Morand, Gary Moore, and April Miller, University of Tulsa/Gilcrease Museum publisher

Poetry 

Fault Line: Vulnerable Landscapes by Karen Coody Cooper, Soddenbank Press 

Contrapuntal by Carol Hamilton, Finishing Line Press

Work is Love Made Visible: Poetry and Family Photographs by Jeanetta

Calhoun Mish, West End Press

In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991 by N. Scott Momaday,

University of New Mexico Press

Too Long a Solitude by James Ragan, University of Oklahoma Press

After the Aftermath by Renata Treitel, Out on a Limb Publishing

 

For more information on the book awards or the award ceremony or to purchase tickets to the event visit the website at www.odl.state.ok.us/ocb or contact Connie Armstrong, executive director, Oklahoma Center for the Book, Oklahoma Department of Libraries, 200 NE 18^th Street, Oklahoma City, OK, 73105, or call 405-522-3383.

—–Pick your favorites and meet me back here after the Book Award ceremony and we’ll compare notes.

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