Western Writers of America announces 2020 Spur Award winners

ENCAMPMENT, Wyo., March 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Documentarians Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, screenwriter John Fusco and first-time novelist Shannon Pufahl are among this year's Spur Award winners from Western Writers of America.

Winners and finalists were announced Wednesday and are scheduled to be honored June 17-20 at WWA's convention in Rapid City, S.D.

Duncan's Country Music: Episode Two: Hard Times (1933-1945) won for Best Documentary Script for the PBS miniseries, and his Country Music: An Illustrated History, cowritten with Burns and published by Alfred A. Knopf, won for Best Contemporary Nonfiction Book. Duncan has won four Spurs.

Fusco's The Highwaymen (Netflix), won for Best Drama Script, while Pufahl's On Swift Horses: A Novel (Riverhead) won for Best Contemporary Novel and Best First Novel.

Sandra Dallas also won her fourth Spur, for Someplace to Call Home (Sleeping Bear Press) for Best Juvenile Fiction.

WWA (WesternWriters.org) promotes and honors 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.

Other winners:

Biography: Nighthawk Rising: A Biography of Accused Cattle Rustler Queen Ann Bassett of Brown's Park by Diana Allen Kouris (High Plains Press).

Historical Nonfiction: Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen (Yale University Press).

Historical Novel: A Forgotten Evil by Sheldon Russell (Cennan Books/Cynren Press).

Mass-Market Paperback Novel: Hawke's Target by Reavis Z. Wortham (Pinnacle/Kensington).

Romance Novel: The Yeggman's Apprentice by C.K. Crigger (Wolfpack).

Traditional Novel: Cherokee America by Margaret Verble (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Juvenile Nonfiction: Spotted Tail by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Reycraft).

Storyteller/Illustrated Children's Book: Let 'Er Buck: George Fletcher, the People's Champion by author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson and illustrator Gordon C. James (Carolrhoda/Lerner Publishing Group).

Short Nonfiction: "'Worry, USA': Dude Ranch Advertising Looks East, 1915-1945" by Flannery Burke (Montana The Magazine of Western History).

Short Fiction: "The Medicine Robe" by Michael Zimmer, published in Contention and Other Frontier Stories (Five Star).

Poem: "Three Kinds of Pleasure" by Mark Sanders, published in In a Good Time: Poems by Mark Sanders (WSC Press).

First Nonfiction Book: The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story by David Crow (Sandra Jonas).

SOURCE Western Writers of America