February Member News

Colorado writer and pilot, Penny Rafferty Hamilton, would choose A is for Airplanes and Airports in her new children’s western history book. Several female pioneers are featured on the pages of this unique picture book which incorporates historic and contemporary photographs, illustrations and simple text to encourage early readers to explore their local and Western heritage. 

My more recent Western history book, A to Z: Your Grand County History Alphabet, is a wonderful children's history book of Grand County, Colorado, that features many historical photographs, stories and facts. This book groups photos and topics in alphabetical order offering fun facts and tidbits that are sure to delight both young and old. This book is available online at www.amazon.com and several Grand County retail locations, including the museum gift shops of the Grand County Historical Association. 100% of this book’s net proceeds promote local history projects.   Publication date:  February 1, 2017.

ISBN: 978-0-692-83321-6

Available for purchase NOW on-line www.amazon.com

May Member News

Alethea Williams, Western historical Náápiikoan Winter is partially based on the writings of Canadian explorer and mapmaker David Thompson. The novel follows an abducted New Mexican woman and a Hudson’s Bay trader and their entanglements with the Piikáni people at the base of the Rocky Mountains in the final years of the eighteenth century. 

Sarah Byrn Rickman, WASP of the Ferry Command, (University of North Texas Press). The little-known story of 303 Women Airforce Service Pilots who initially were employed to move small aircraft from the factories to the flight training bases. By the time the war ramped up as 1944 began, the women had proved themselves and they began to ferry single-engine, single-seat pursuit (fighter) aircraft to the docks for shipment abroad to the battlefront. Forty of these women relate bits of their own experiences, bringing a personal touch to one of World War II’s lesser known but critical chapters.

Jennifer J. Lawrence, Soap Suds Row: The Bold Lives of Army Laundresses, 1802-1876. Not camp followers, but officially on the rolls of the U.S. Army, laundresses were unorthodox, spirited women in the midst of military action. Heroines, eccentrics, saviors, spies, prostitutes, cross-dressers, wives, mothers—they are a side of the military you’ve never read about.

AWARDS

Janet Jensen, Gabriel's Daughters, won the Body, Mind and Spirit award from Southwest Book Design and Production. It received a silver medal from Readers Favorites. It was also a finalist in Religious Fiction and Cultural Fiction in Foreword Magazine's IndieFab contest.

Sarah Byrn Rickman received two awards from the 119-year-old National League of American Pen Women, Inc. She was awarded First Place in the Vinnie Ream Letters Competition for her forthcoming WASP biography Finding Dorothy Scott, the story of a 23-year-old pilot who died in a midair collision while flying for the WASP in World War II. Sarah also won first place in the Eudora Welty Memorial Award for Fiction for her WASP novel Flight to Destiny, published 2014. While still a manuscript, Flight to Destiny won First Place in Historical Fiction at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in 2000.

Penny Rafferty Hamilton has earned a Bessie Minor Swift Foundation grant to partner with the Grand County Historical Association on the creation of a new children’s history book called A to Z: Your Grand County History Alphabet. Hamilton is the author of two Grand County history books, Granby Then & Now 1905-2005 and Around Granby. All profits from the new book will benefit Grand County historic preservation projects. 

 

Susan Tweit has been awarded a fellowship at the Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe to work on her next book, which includes a one-month residency at the historic Acequia Madre house. 

Andrea Jones' Blog, "Between Urban and Wild" won top honors in the blog category of the 2016 Writing Awards sponsored by the Colorado Authors' League (coloradoauthors.org). Comments from the judges praised the site for "Delicious writing, gentle and deep." Andrea blogs about people and land, gardening, wildlife, weather, horses, and writing from her home place in central Colorado.