WWA Announces 2013 Spur Award Winners

ENCAMPMENT, Wyo., March 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomas Cobb's "With Blood in Their Eyes" won the 2013 Spur Award for Best Western Long Novel, and Robert M. Utley's "Geronimo" won for Best Western Nonfiction-Biography, Western Writers of America has announced.

It is Cobb's second Spur and Utley's third. The University of Arizona Press published "With Blood in Their Eyes." Yale University Press published "Geronimo."

Since 1953, Western Writers of America has promoted and honored the best in Western literature with the annual Spur Awards, selected by panels of judges. Awards, for material published last year, are given for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West. Previous winners include Elmer Kelton, Lucia St. Clair Robson and Larry McMurtry.

Winners and finalists in 17 categories will be honored June 25-29 at the WWA convention in Las Vegas, Nev.

Will Bagley, Nancy Plain and Red Shuttleworth all won their third Spurs, with Bagley's "With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: Trails to the Mining West, 1849-1852" (University of Oklahoma Press) for Best Western Nonfiction-Historical, Plain's "Light on the Prairie: Solomon D. Butcher, Photographer of Nebraska's Pioneer Days" (University of Nebraska Press) for Best Western Nonfiction-Juvenile and Shuttleworth's "Johnny Ringo" (Riverhouse) for Best Western Poem.

Brett Cogburn's "Panhandle" (Pinnacle) won for Best First Novel, and Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" claimed Best Western Drama Script.

Other winners:

Short Novel: "Tucker's Reckoning" by Matthew Mayo (New American Library).

Juvenile Fiction: "Wide Open" by Larry Bjornson (Penguin Group).

Storyteller (illustrated children's book): "Pecos Bill Invents the Ten-Gallon Hat" by author Kevin Strauss and illustrator David Harrington (Pelican).

Mass Market Paperback: "The Coyote Tracker" by Larry Sweazy (Berkley).

Audiobook: "Ring of Fire" by Cotton Smith (Books in Motion).

Nonfiction-Contemporary: "Desert Reckoning: A Town Sheriff, a Mojave Hermit, and the Biggest Manhunt in Modern California History" by Deanne Stillman (Nation Books).

Short Fiction Story: "The Hog Whisperer" by John Mort (Flint Hills Review).

Short Nonfiction: "Marathoner Louis Tewanima and the Continuity of Hopi Running, 1908-1912" by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert (Western Historical Quarterly).

Documentary Script: "The Dust Bowl" by Dayton Duncan (Florentine Films/PBS).

Song (TIE): "Texas is Burnin'" by Jim Jones (Jim Jones Music) and "Any Name Will Do" by Mary Kaye (Knaphus Enterprises).

For a complete list of winners and finalists, log on to www.westernwriters.org.

SOURCE Western Writers of America

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