Category: Awards

Joe E. Watkins Receives SAA Lifetime Achievement Award

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Abby Mogollon

April 17, 2025

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) announced the recipients of its 2025 awards, which will be bestowed on April 25, 2025 at the SAA 90th Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

“The Society has a long tradition of acknowledging excellence in the field of archaeology through our awards, which pay tribute to those performing outstanding archaeological scholarship and research,” said SAA President Dan Sandweiss. “In addition to honoring highly trained and experienced archaeologists, SAA awards also identify up-and-coming leaders in the field. We are particularly pleased that this year’s Lifetime Achievement recipient is Joe Watkins, a past SAA president and only the second Native American SAA president.”

The press release shares that Watkins, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, served as SAA president from 2019 to 2022. The only previous Native American SAA president was the SAA’s founder and first president, Arthur C. Clark. Dr. Watkins was selected because he has opened up the discipline for Indigenous archaeologists with accomplishments like beginning the SAA Native American Scholarships and “his tireless efforts to elevate both institutional and public images of archaeology as a profession, especially those in which Indigenous peoples globally are welcomed and respected as collaborators and beneficiaries.”

“To be recognized by my peers for an award of this magnitude is beyond belief,” Watkins said. “I am humbled and honored to have my contributions to the discipline considered to be on a similar level to those who have previously earned this award.”

SAA award recipients, such as for the Lifetime Achievement honor, are selected by dedicated and knowledgeable award committees made up of SAA member volunteers.

Watkins is the author of the forthcoming work from the University of Arizona Press Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future. The work provides a comprehensive look at the rich history and cultural resilience of the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Hokkaido, Japan, tracing their journey from ancient times to their contemporary struggles for recognition. It will be published in November 2025.

Manuel Iris Wins 2025 Ambroggio Prize

Posted on March 11, 2025March 11, 2025 by maryreynolds

March 11, 2025

The Academy of American Poets has announced that The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters | Toda la tierra es un jardín de monstruos, written by Manuel Iris (in photo above) and co-translated by Iris and Kevin McHugh, was selected by Giannina Braschi as the winner of the 2025 Ambroggio Prize. The Prize is given annually for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and with an English translation. The winners receive $1,000 and publication by the University of Arizona Press, a nationally recognized publisher of emerging and established voices in Latinx and Indigenous literature. The book will be published by the University of Arizona Press in 2026. Previous winners include Octavio Quintanilla, author and co-translator with Natalia Treviño; Margarita Pintado Burgos, with translator Alejandra Quintana Arocho; and Elizabeth Torres.

Braschi commented on the collection: “The poet pays homage to the migrant who will not be remembered or missed if lost. There is an intriguing parallel between two main characters—Juan Dominguez, migrant of fire, and Hieronymus Bosch, portraitist of fire—whose early lives are marked by the catastrophic fire from which they were born into new names, new ways, new lives.”

Manuel Iris is a Mexican-born American poet based in Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Cincinnati. The former Poet Laureate of Cincinnati, Iris currently serves as Writer-in-Residence for the Hamilton County Public Library; is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More University; and is a member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators.

Kevin McHugh is a translator, poet, and editor with over thirty years of experience in writing and teaching. He holds an MA in English from the University of Windsor, specializing in Irish literature. McHugh’s career spans both education and the literary world, having taught writing at the secondary and college levels, while also serving as a fellow of the National (Ohio) Writing Project.

We are thrilled to be publishing this award-winning collection. Congratulations, Manuel!

***

About the Academy of American Poets

The Academy of American Poets is the United States’ leading champion of poets and poetry. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to poets across the nation. It also operates Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded poetry website, and organizes National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world. Additionally, the Academy publishes Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine, provides free educational resources for K–12 educators and adult learners, and leads the Poetry Coalition, a network of organizations dedicated to promoting the vital role of poetry in our culture. Visit poets.org for more information.

Manuela Lavinas Picq wins Activist Scholar Award

Posted on March 7, 2025March 6, 2025 by maryreynolds

March 7, 2025

The International Studies Association, International Political Economy Section gave Manuela Lavinas Picq the 2024 Outstanding Activist Scholar Award. She is co-author with Andrew Canessa of Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State.

To celebrate the award, Picq recently participated in a roundtable, “When Our Bodies Stand for Our Ideas” at the Plenary Session of Development Days Conference 2025 in Helsinki, Finland. Other roundtable participants were previous award-winner Teivo Teivanen, Barry Gills, who co-founded the award, and Bonn Juego, who is Director of the Finnish Society for Development.

Congratulations, Manuela!

About the book:

Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, the Savages and Citizens shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.

Octavio Quintanilla Inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters

Posted on March 6, 2025March 6, 2025 by maryreynolds

March 6, 2025

Members of the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL) approved Octavio Quintanilla as one of thirty-two new writers to the TIL, a distinguished honor society established in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement.

Las Horas Impossibles | The Impossible Hours, written by Quintanilla and co-translated by the poet and Natalia Treviño, is his latest literary work. Quintanilla is also the author of the poetry collections If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and The Book of Wounded Sparrows (Texas Review Press, 2024). He is the founder and director of the literature and arts festival VersoFrontera; publisher of Alabrava Press; and former poet laureate of San Antonio, Texas. His visual poems Frontextos have been published and exhibited widely. He teaches literature and creative writing at Our Lady of the Lake University.

In the media release, TIL President David Bowles said of the newly inducted members: “We are overjoyed and honored to welcome such a varied and stellar group of literary talents. These folks are some of the very best in their respective fields, and we congratulate not only their nomination and induction, but also the years they have each dedicated to Texas letters.”

Congratulations, Octavio!

Bojan Louis Wins USA Fellowship

Posted on February 25, 2025February 20, 2025 by maryreynolds

February 25, 20225

Bojan Louis, contributor to The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, was named a USA (United States Artists) Fellow by Chicago-based nonprofit organization United States Artists. The organization recognizes artists in writing, design, crafting, dance, film, media, music and theater. The USA Fellowship comes with an unrestricted $50,000. Since its inception in 2006, the program has distributed more $41 million to more than 1,000 artists.

“We are honored to announce the 2025 USA Fellowship with this wonderfully skilled and multifaceted group of Fellows,” said Judilee Reed, president and CEO of United States Artists, in a statement. “Much like this cohort, our support through the USA Fellowship is enduring and manifold, extending beyond a momentary and monetary contribution to establish a durable and sustainable relationship that artists may draw on at each stage of their careers.”

Louis is Diné of the Naakai dine’é, born for the Áshííhí. In addition to teaching at the Institute for American Indian Arts, Louis is an associate professor of English and American Indian Studies in the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. He said, “I write a lot about addiction, fatherhood and being Navajo – what that means and what it means to be a wanderer. My real love is fiction and short stories. I love poetry, but I gravitate toward short stories.”

Congratulations Bojan Louis!

2025 Southwest Books of the Year

Posted on January 23, 2025January 28, 2025 by maryreynolds

January 22, 2024

Our non-fiction, memoir, and poetry books made the 2025 Southwest Books of the Year list! Each year, the Pima County Public Library releases this list, honoring “titles published during the calendar year that are about the Southwest, or are set in the Southwest.” Below, read about our books that were selected for 2025, and visit the Pima County Public Library website to see the full list.

Southwest Book of the Year – Top Non-fiction Book

The University of Arizona: A History in 100 Stories by Gregory McNamee received the top honor in the non-fiction category. The book celebrates the people, ideas, inventions, teaching, and structures that have been part of the school’s evolution from a small land-grant institution to an internationally renowned research institution. Drawing on half a century of connection with the University of Arizona as a student, staff member, and faculty member, Gregory McNamee presents a history through the lens of a hundred subjects.

Other University of Arizona Press Southwest Book of the Year Picks

In a voice that is jubilant, irreverent, sometimes scouring, sometimes heartfelt, and always unmistakably her own, Amber McCrary remaps the deserts of Arizona through the blue corn story of a young Diné woman figuring out love and life with an O’odham man. Reflecting experiences of Indigenous joy, pain, and family, these shapeshifting poems in Blue Corn Tongue celebrate the love between two Native partners, a love that flourishes alongside the traumas they face in the present and the past.

Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by Martinez’s great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes—the molino. With clear eyes and warm humor, In The Molino: A Memoir, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors.

A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in They Call You Back, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and the New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers.”

Forging a Sustainable Southwest, by Stephen E. Strom, introduces readers to four conservation efforts that provide insight into how diverse groups of citizens have worked collaboratively to develop visions for land use that harmonized sometimes conflicting ecological, economic, cultural, and community needs. Through the voices of more than seventy individuals involved in these efforts, we learn how they’ve developed plans for protecting, restoring, and stewarding lands sustainably; the management and funding tools they’ve used; and their perceptions of the challenges that remain and how to meet them.

Congratulations to all!

Sarah Hernandez Receives MLA Honorable Mention

Posted on December 17, 2024February 25, 2025 by Cameron Quan

December 17, 2024

The accolades just keep coming for University of Arizona Press author Sarah Hernandez!

We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition has received an honorable mention for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Winners.

The committee’s citation for Hernandez’s book reads:

“Sarah Hernandez’s We Are the Stars: Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition illuminates how settler missionaries, policies, teachers, and writers worked to colonize Oceti Sakowin literary practice by attacking its foundations—Oceti Sakowin women and land. It then reconstructs an Oceti Sakowin literary tradition over a long period of time commonly understood as one of loss and lack. Hernandez first reveals the links between literary colonization and land colonization, showing how nineteenth-century missionary colonizers gained knowledge of Dakota language and literature, mistranslated stories, and helped translate and ratify treaties to serve their purposes, before turning to how Oceti Sakowin authors—largely women—later revitalized their literary traditions by decolonizing settler land narratives with attention to language, land knowledge, and women’s authority. Hernandez models a powerful method of literary recovery in the context of a colonized literary tradition.”

Earlier this year, We Are the Stars was also selected as the winner of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association’s (NAISA) 2024 Best First Book Award. Read an excerpt from the book on our website.

We Are the Stars is part of the University of Arizona Press’ Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies Series, which anchors intellectual work within an Indigenous framework that reflects Native-centered concerns and objectives.

Congratulations to Sarah on yet another incredible achievement!

Diego Báez on 2024 “Best of” Lists

Posted on December 11, 2024December 9, 2024 by maryreynolds

December 11, 2024

Yaguareté White by poet Diego Báez, appears on several end-of-year “best of” lists. Starting in the United Kingdom, Leo Boix of The Morningstar Online chose it as one of the “2024 Best Books by Latinx and Latin American Authors.” Boix wrote, “Yaguarete White by Latinx poet Diego Báez, was one of my favourite poetry books of the year. The book evokes Guaraní mythology through personal narratives and migrant experiences, skillfully weaving a tapestry of cultural appreciation and diasporic resonances. Baez uses Paraguayan Guarani, Spanish, and English to create a multilayered poetic world where the jaguar reigns supreme in all its forms.” Also, Rigoberto Gonzalez, editor of the University of Arizona Press’s Camino del Sol series, made this Best Books list with his edited volume: Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology.

Báez’s book was also included in Debutiful‘s list of “The Best Debut Poetry of 2024.” They wrote, “This is an eloquent and introspective collection that explores diaspora, belonging, and heritage. The poems are beautifully written and also pack a bite to them with a sprinkling of absurdist and humor.”

Yaguareté White is a finalist for two awards in the Chicago area. The Chicago Review of Books placed the book on the poetry shortlist for the CHIRBy Award. The CHIRBy Awards honor the best fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and short essays and stories that feature Chicago and its strong literary community. The winners will be announced on December 12. Chicago Reader Magazine also nominated Yaguareté White for “Best new poetry collection by a Chicagoan” award. If you loved this book, you can vote for Báez here.

What a great collection of lists—congratulations, Diego!

Kimberly Blaeser Wins Poets & Writers Award

Posted on December 9, 2024 by maryreynolds

December 9, 2024

Poets & Writers announced today that Kimberly Blaeser, Angie Cruz, and Kiese Laymon will receive the 2025 Writers for Writers Award. Kimberly Blaeser is author of Ancient Light, a collection that uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.

Blaeser is being recognized for nurturing and mentoring Indigenous poets through Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po), an organization she founded in 2020. She is the author of six poetry collections and served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2015–16. An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, Blaeser is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation, an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts, and professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Award recipients are selected by a committee composed of current and past members of the Poets & Writers Board of Directors, chaired by literary agent Eric Simonoff. Of the 2025 honorees, Simonoff said: “These are extraordinary literary citizens who have each made tremendous contributions to the writing and publishing communities. They exemplify Poets & Writers’ core values of service and excellence, and we are delighted to recognize each one of them.”

The awards will be presented at Poets & Writers’ gala on March 24, 2025, in New York City.

Congratulations, Kimberly!

2024 Booklist Editors Choice: They Call You Back

Posted on December 4, 2024December 4, 2024 by maryreynolds

December 4, 2024

They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, by Tim Z. Hernandez has been selected by Booklist as a 2024 Editors Choice Title! Booklist is the book review journal of the American Library Association. In the Booklist starred review of the book, Lillian Liao wrote, “Hernandez courageously embraces the fragility of stories and generously shares their underlying worldviews, allowing readers to touch the invisible. Anchored by grief, this is a must-read to understand a solemn part of America’s modern history that is still very present.”

They Call You Back is a memoir about the investigations that have shaped the greater part of the author’s life. Hernandez takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. Hernandez continues his search for families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.

Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award. His work has been featured in international media, and in 2018 he was recognized by the California Senate for his work locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos, which is chronicled in his book, All They Will Call You.

Congratulations Tim!

The University of Arizona Press