August Member News

The BIG news this month is our winners and finalists for the WILLA Literary Awards, honoring the best books published in 2013 and featuring women's and girl's stories set in the West. Congratulations all!

CONTEMPORARY FICTION

WINNER: Bone Horses by Lesley Poling-Kempes (La Alameda Press)
FINALIST: Jackson’s Pond, Texas by Teddy Jones (Midtown Publishing, Inc.)
FINALIST: Blood of the White Bear by Marcia Calhoun Forecki and Gerald Schnitzer (WriteLife, LLC)

HISTORICAL FICTION
WINNER: Dollybird by Anne Lazurko (Coteau Books)
FINALIST: Meadowlark by Dawn Wink (Pronghorn Press)
FINALIST: A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)

ORIGINAL SOFTCOVER FICTION (TRADE OR MASS MARKET)
WINNER: Junction, Utah by Rebecca Lawton (Wavegirl Books)
FINALIST: Merciless by Lori Armstrong (Simon and Schuster/Touchstone)
FINALIST: Bodie by Anne Sweazy-Kulju (Tate Publishing)

CREATIVE NONFICTION
WINNER: Gaining Daylight: Life on Two Islands by Sara Loewen (University of Alaska Press)
FINALIST: Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl (Beacon Press)
FINALIST: Circling Back Home: A Plainswoman’s Journey by Darcy Lipp-Acord (South Dakota State Historical Society Press)

SCHOLARLY NONFICTION
WINNER: Trail Sisters: Freedwomen in Indian Territory, 1850-1890 by Linda Williams Reese (Texas Tech University Press)
FINALIST: I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches by Sherry Robinson (University of North Texas Press)
FINALIST: Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp by Ann Kirschner (Harper Collins)

POETRY
WINNER: Losing the Ring in the River by Marge Saiser (University of New Mexico Press)
FINALIST: Upriver by Carolyn Kremers (University of Alaska Press)
FINALIST: Life Between Dust & Clouds by Sally Harper Bates (Morris Publishing)

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT FICTION & NONFICTION
WINNER: Written in Stone by Rosanne Parry (Random House Children’s Books)
FINALIST: Taking the Reins by Dayle Campbell Gaetz (Coteau Books)
FINALIST: My Magic Cowboy by Katy Lente (Casa de Snapdragon LLC Publishing)

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Lorrie Farrelly, Terms of Surrender, is a finalist in the Western Fiction and Historical Fiction categories in this year's Reader's Favorite Book Awards. Former Confederate Captain Michael Cantrell has lost his home and everyone he loved. On the Wyoming frontier, he finds himself suddenly in the middle of Annie Devlin's war. Standing with the determined young rancher will test the limits of Michael's courage – and his passion. 

Amy Hale Auker, Rightful Place has been re-released in paperback by the Texas Tech University Press. From the Texas panhandle to the mountains of Arizona, Amy Auker has lived the cowboy life—as wife, as mother, as cook, as ranch hand, as writer. In fine-grained detail she captures the prairie light, the traffic on small farm-to-market roads, the vacant stillness of shipping pens when fall works are over. But she also captures the unmistakable westernness of the people and creatures around her: the son who must get back on the horse that just bucked him off, the husband who gives great gifts, the animals whose names and temperaments are as recognizable as family. Auker understands those who live in the sway of nature’s moods far off the main roads, and she commends them to us in luminous prose backlit by her own hard-earned experience.