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Western States Book Awards CREATIVE NONFICTION Told with the unapologetic grace of one who has spent years working amidst the rough beauty of the rural West, In these Hills is a moving work about the passions of place. In this collection of essays culled from his contributions to Big Sky Journal, Beer provides the reader with an intimate sense of his life as a Montana cattleman. The judges felt that "Anyone who wants to know what it was to struggle with one's hands and heart to keep faith with a rugged place will find no more eloquent testimony. Beer writes with the kind of clarity that burns its imprint into the mind and his words can't be easily erased." Ralph Beer received his M.F.A. from the University of Montana, Missoula and his B.A. from Montana State University. For nearly two decades, Beer worked for his family's cattle business, the Howard Beer Hereford Ranch. He is the author of a Spur Award winning novel, The Blind Corral, has been a featured columnist in Big Sky Journal, was a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship in 1985. Originally created as a publishing adjunct to the magazine Big Sky Journal, Bangtail Press specializes in collectible limited editions dealing with subjects relevant to Montana and the Northwest. Publishing only one or two books per year, Bangtail Press is committed to the idea of creating books that are complete pieces of art—from the writing to the design to the final binding. Previous works have included A Quiet Place of Violence: Hunting and Ethics in the Missouri River Breaks, by Allen Morris Jones; Where We Live: The Best of Big Sky Journal (reprinted by St. Martin's Press as The Big Sky Reader); and Dawn Waters, a collection of short stories by Jack Curtis. Bangtail Press
Set in Haslam's native California, Straight White Male is a powerful narrative that is told with an authentic voice made fuller through each character's relation to memory. Now in midlife, Leroy Upton (the protagonist) must reconcile himself to the intimate and disturbing complexities of his life: his spouse, his family, and himself. The judges felt that Haslam has given us "A work of fine achievement . . . in which the author creates a deeply personal story about the meaning of love in the face of death and the corruption of love." One in which his "tortured hero rises above the hate and anger of his youth to the level of mature, humane community in which forgiveness radiates from the soul of the protagonist to someplace deep within the reader." Gerald Haslam was born and raised in California's Central Valley. The author
of eight collections of short fiction and six works of nonfiction, Haslam has
written extensively on Californians and the California experience. He is currently
Professor Emeritus of English at Sonoma State University. University of Nevada Press
Divided into three sections—"Old, Very Old: A series of poems in an old voice"; "Night Fishing"; and "Maleness and Violence"—The Brink is a work that explores the landscapes of perspective. Here, Peter Sears offers his readers verses that encompass an expansive range of characters and voices. The judges noted that "Nothing is predictable, but everything is warm, exciting insightful and humane. His compassion is deeply accurate and accompanied by an appreciative, affirming humor. . . . When he steps into a life, regardless of its age or gender, he does so with respect and acuity for its lessons." Peter Sears is a graduate of Yale and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He worked for many years in academia, teaching at Reed College and serving as Dean of Students at Bard College. Sears also served as the Community Services Coordinator for the Oregon Arts Commission. Excluding The Brink, he is the author of three other books: Secret Writing; Tour, New & Selected Poems; and I'm Gonna Bake Me a Rainbow Poem. Sears' poetry has been published in numerous literary magazines and can be found in several anthologies. In 1969, Gibbs Smith and his wife, Catherine, started the company known today as Gibbs Smith Publisher, originally working out of their studio apartment in Santa Barbara, California. With $12,000 in cash earned from their work on the movie Joe Hill, adapted from Gibbs' nonfiction publication of the same name, the company published four books that would be used as supplementary texts in college history classes. One of these books, The Shirley Letters, has not been out of print since. In 1973, they moved the company to Utah and spent their first summer converting an old barn (built in 1916 and situated on Cathy's family farm) into offices, which they initially shared with the resident cows. Today, many of the employees of Gibbs Smith Publisher still work out of that barn, but the cows are gone. According to Gibbs, working in this rural environment stimulates the creative side of the business, which has always been its dominant strength. Gibbs Smith Publisher
The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain is an expanded and newly translated bilingual edition of the poetry of Han Shan ("Cold Mountain"). Han Shan, the Buddhist hermit who lived twelve hundred years ago in China's Tientai Mountains, left an indelible mark on Chinese literature and Zen. The judges felt that this was "an exquisite publication that captures the Taoist practice of passionate attention, of being still inside and relaxed in the comforts and discomforts around you, going nowhere else. . . . We discover this in the poet's vision and spirit, in the precision and balance of the translator's scholarship and heart, and in the elegant wilderness of the bookmaker's art around them. On every level this is a beautiful book." Bill Porter, who publishes his translations under the name of Red Pine, was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Northern Idaho. Porter lived for several years as Buddhist monk in Taiwan. Following his stay at the monastery, he found work at English-language radio stations in both Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he was a correspondent. Bill Porter has written one novel—Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits—and made several translations from the Chinese: Taoteching, The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, The Zen Works of Stone House, and The Clouds Should Know Me by Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China. Currently, Porter resides in Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon Press is a nonprofit publisher devoted to the enhancement and appreciation of poetry. For 27 years, the Press has published both new and established poets and poetry translated from a variety of ancient and modern languages. Copper Canyon Press
In these Hills by Ralph Beer Clancy, Montana Tony and the Cows: A True Story from the
Straight White Male by Gerald Haslam Penngrove, California The Yellow Ribbon Snake by J.R. Dailey Vail, Arizona
Dying for Beauty by Gail Wronsky Topanga, California Thunderweavers/Tejedoras de Rayos by Juan Philipe Herrera Fresno, California
The judges for the 2000 Western States Book Awards include the following individuals: |