Category: Awards

Voices from Bears Ears Chosen as a Finalist for the 2020 Oregon Book Award

Posted on February 7, 2020February 7, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

February 7, 2020

We are thrilled to announce that Voices from Bears Ears by Rebecca Robinson and Stephen Strom is a finalist for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, a section of the 2020 Oregon Book Awards!

Literary Arts‘ Oregon Book Awards program honors the state’s finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, graphic literature, drama, literary nonfiction, and literature for young readers. In addition to financial support, the program produces the Oregon Book Awards Author Tour to connect local writers and literary organizations in all parts of Oregon. Each year, Oregon Book Awards finalists and winners travel to towns across Oregon for readings, school visits, and free writing workshops.

Through the stories of twenty individuals, and informed by interviews with more than seventy people, Voices from Bears Ears captures the passions of those who fought to protect Bears Ears and those who opposed the monument as a federal “land grab” that threatened to rob them of their economic future. It gives voice to those who have felt silenced, ignored, or disrespected. It shares stories of those who celebrate a growing movement by Indigenous peoples to protect ancestral lands and culture, and those who speak devotedly about their Mormon heritage. What unites these individuals is a reverence for a homeland that defines their cultural and spiritual identity, and therein lies hope for finding common ground.

Portland-based journalist Rebecca Robinson provides context and perspective for understanding the ongoing debate and humanizes the abstract issues at the center of the debate. Interwoven with these stories are photographs of the interviews and the land they consider sacred by photographer Stephen E. Strom. Through word and image, Robinson and Strom allow us to both hear and see the people whose lives are intertwined with this special place.

Congratulations to all of the finalists! The winners will be announced live at the Oregon Book Awards Ceremony on Monday, April 27 at the Portland Center Stage at the Armory.

The Motions Beneath Wins the CALACS Book Prize

Posted on January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

January 13, 2020

We are excited to announce that The Motions Beneath by Laurent Corbeil is the winner of the 2019 Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies’ (CALACS) Book Prize!

The CALACS Best Book Prize is awarded to the most outstanding book published in 2018 by a member of CALACS who researches Latin America and the Caribbean.

The CALACS Book Prize Committee praised The Motions Beneath by saying, “In this work, Corbeil carried out meticulous archival research to present the micro-interactions of Indigenous migrants who traveled to the mines of San Luís Potosí. While these migrants were motivated by economic needs, Corbeil notes that they interacted in ways– both within and beyond their own communities– that profoundly shaped the city. Corbeil makes creative use of legal records to unearth histories of mobility and the interactions between members of different Indigenous communities that otherwise do not appear in the historical record. Moreover, the book is written lucidly and provides expansive contextualization of colonial Potosí. The Committee congratulates Dr. Corbeil on this fantastic achievement.”

The University of Arizona Press congratulates Laurent Corbeil on this fantastic achievement, as well!

Yvette Saavedra Awarded the WHA-Huntington Library Martin Ridge Fellowship

Posted on October 28, 2019October 29, 2019 by Savannah Hicks

October 29, 2019

In recognition of Martin Ridge’s long service to both the Western History Association and The Huntington Library, the WHA-Huntington Library Martin Ridge Fellowship is a one-month research fellowship at The Huntington Library. The 2019 winner of the fellowship is University of Arizona Press author, Yvette Saavedra.

Yvette Saavedra’s recent book, Pasadena Before the Roses, examines a period of 120 years to illustrate the interconnectedness of power, ideas of land use, and the negotiation of identity within multiple colonial moments. By centering the San Gabriel Mission lands as the region’s economic, social, and cultural foundation, she shows how Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and American groups each have redefined the meanings of land use to build their homes and their lives. These visions have resulted in competing colonialisms that framed the racial, ethnic, gender, and class hierarchies of their respective societies.

Congratulations, Yvette, on receiving this honor!

Laura Da’ Wins 2019 Washington Book Award

Posted on October 28, 2019October 29, 2019 by Savannah Hicks

October 29, 2019

Poet Laura Da’ is the winner of the 2019 Washington Book Award poetry category, for her UA Press collection Instruments of the True Measure! The Seattle Review of Books writes, “This year’s list of nominees was the finest in recent memory; the judges must have been under tremendous pressure to select a single winner from each category. It really, truly was an honor just to be nominated this year, because it placed you in company with the best authors this state has to offer.“

In Instruments of the True Measure, Da’ charts the coordinates and intersections of land, history, and culture. Lyrical passages map the parallel lives of ancestral figures and connect dispossessions of the past to lived experiences of the present. Shawnee history informs the collection, and Da’s fascination with uncovering and recovering brings the reader deeper into the narrative of Shawnee homeland.

Below, read an excerpt from an interview with Laura Da’ from the Seattle Review of Books:

“‘I think that I’ve always been well connected in the indigenous poetry community,’ Da’ says, ‘because I started my education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and there are so many writers who have come out of that school. It’s a tight, small community generally speaking, though it’s incredibly vast in terms of talent and experience.’ She felt a part of that community almost immediately.

But even though she was born and raised in Snoqualmie Valley, and lived most of her life in western Washington, breaking into this city’s poetry community took more work. ‘Seattle is not easy to get in the door, I think, which is really unfortunate,’ Da’ says. She says Seattle’s literary community has a fair share of ‘gatekeepers’ who aren’t especially good at making new voices feel welcome.

But then ‘I was a Jack Straw fellow and a Hugo House fellow and that really helped me,’ Da’ says. What was it about those two programs that worked for her? ‘I met a lot of wonderful writers and good friends. I’m fairy introverted and shy, so usually I need an extrovert to sort of adopt me. And that was the way I found a place in the Seattle poetry community.’

The poets who influence Da’ range widely in terms of style and background. Da’ gushes over poems by Danez Smith, Natalie Diaz, Sherwin Bitsui, and Casandra Lopez. She speaks of Arthur Sze’s ‘respect for the reader and the reader’s ability to handle the ambiguity of the unanswered.’

Da’ is so enthusiastic about Sze’s writing that she doesn’t seem to realize that she could just as easily be describing her own work— these elegant couplets crafted from the smallest and most delicate materials, but which only grow finer with age.“

Read the entire interview here.

Congratulations on winning this incredible award, Laura!

Oscar J. Martínez is an International Latino Book Award Runner-Up

Posted on September 23, 2019September 23, 2019 by Savannah Hicks

September 23, 2019

Congratulations to Oscar J. Martínez on winning second place in the History category of the prestigious International Latino Book Awards! The 2019 International Latino Book Awards Ceremony took place on Saturday, September 21st in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles City College. The International Latino Book Awards have grown to be the largest Latino literary and cultural awards in the USA.

The award-winning book, Ciudad Juárez, is a critical historical overview of the legendary border city of Juárez. Martínez explores the economic and social evolution of this famous transnational urban center, emphasizing the city’s deep ties to the United States. In countless ways, the history of Juárez is the history of the entire Mexican northern frontier. Understanding how the city evolved provides a greater appreciation for the formidable challenges faced by Mexican fronterizos and yields vital insights into the functioning of borderland regions around the world.

Oscar J. Martínez is a Regent’s Professor of History at the University of Arizona. He has authored and edited numerous books and many articles, book chapters, and reviews.

A huge congratulations to Oscar!

April 15, 2019

At this year’s Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies, Rachel Corr was honored with the council’s prestigious Judy Ewell Award for Interwoven: Andean Lives in Colonial Ecuador’s Textile Economy.

The Judy Ewell Award honors the best publication, book or article, on women’s history or written by a woman, that began as a RMCLAS presentation.

Interwoven focuses on the lives of native Andean families in Pelileo, a town dominated by one of Quito’s largest and longest-lasting textile mills. Rachel Corr reveals the strategies used by indigenous people to maintain their families and reconstitute their communities in the face of colonial disruptions.

In the award ceremony, the committee said, “Interwoven is a tactile, resonant work that exposes the ties that bind the global to the local and reveals how the textile economy impacted indigenous families. Most crucially, Corr argues that despite the horrendous conditions that shaped their subjectivity, the “obraje Indians” of Pelileo found ways to forge connections with one another and create a semblance of community. This study will be required reading for all of those interested in indigenous labor, community, and ethnogenesis.”

Rachel Corr is an associate professor of anthropology at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Ecuador since 1990. She is the author of Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes.

Margaret Bruchac Receives Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award

Posted on April 4, 2019April 5, 2019 by Rose Brandt

April 4, 2019

Margaret M. Bruchac and her book Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists received the prestigious Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award. The book is the 11th winner of the award, which honors books in Indigenous studies.

Savage Kin restructures readers’ views of relationships between Indigenous informants, such as Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Jesse Cornplanter, and George Hunt, and anthropologists, such as Frank Speck, Arthur C. Parker, William N. Fenton, and Franz Boas. Like other texts focused on this era, it features anthropological luminaries credited with saving material that might otherwise have been lost. Unlike other texts, it highlights the intellectual contributions of unsung Indigenous informants without whom this research could never have taken place.

The book “distinguished itself among an impressive field of Indigenous scholars nominated for this year’s award,” said Labriola Book Award Selection Committee Chair David Martínez.

Established in 2008, the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award celebrates books that focus on topics and issues that are pertinent to Indigenous peoples and nations. Of particular interest are those works written by Indigenous scholars or in which Indigenous persons played a significant role in the creation of the nominated work.

This is the second time a University of Arizona Press title has been honored with the award. In 2012, Daniel Herman was awarded for his work Rim Country Exodus: A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making, which examines the complex, contradictory, and very human relations between Indians, settlers, and Federal agents in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Arizona—a time that included Arizona’s brutal Indian wars.

Jenny Davis Wins Beatrice Medicine Award

Posted on March 12, 2019August 28, 2019 by Rose Brandt

March 12, 2019

Jenny Davis has been named the recipient of the Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Monograph in American Indian Studies from the Native American Literature Symposium for her University of Arizona Press book Talking Indian: Identity and Language Revitalization in the Chickasaw Renaissance.

Talking Indian explores community, tribal identity, and language during rapid economic and demographic shifts in the Chickasaw Nation. These shifts have dramatically impacted who participates in the semiotic trends of language revitalization, as well as their motivations. Jenny L. Davis uncovers how such language processes are intertwined with economic growth.

Jenny L. Davis is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she is also the director of the Native American and Indigenous Languages (NAIL) Lab and affiliated faculty in the American Indian Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies Departments.

Two University of Arizona Press Titles Named Foreword Book Award Finalists

Posted on March 11, 2019March 18, 2019 by Rose Brandt

March 11, 2019

Two University of Arizona Press books were named finalists today in the Foreword Reviews 2018 Indies Book of the Year Awards.

Mark Nelson’s Pushing Our Limits is a finalist in the Ecology & Environment category. One of the eight crew members locked in Biosphere 2 during its first closure experiment, Mark Nelson offers a compelling insider’s view of the dramatic story behind the mini-world. Nelson clears up common misconceptions about the 1991–1993 closure experiment as he presents the goals and results of the experiment and the implications of the project for today’s global environmental challenges and for reconnecting people to a healthy relationship with nature.

Stephen Strom’s Bears Ears: Views from a Sacred Land was named a finalist in the Regional Books category. This book captures the singular beauty of Bears Ears country in all seasons, its textural subtleties portrayed alongside the drama of expansive landscapes and skies, deep canyons, spires, and towering mesas. To photographer Stephen E. Strom’s sensitive eyes, a scrub oak on a hillside or a pattern in windswept sand is as essential to capturing the spirit of the landscape as the region’s most iconic vistas. Years from now, this book may serve as either a celebration of the foresight of visionary leaders or as an elegy for what was lost.

According to a Foreword Reviews press release, more than 2,000 entries spread across 56 genres were submitted for consideration. Finalists were determined by Foreword’s editorial team. Winners are now being decided by a panel of librarian and bookseller judges from across the country.

Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s Independent Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 14, 2019.

Katherine Morrissey and John-Michael Warner Awarded BRLA Southwest Book Awards

Posted on January 18, 2019January 18, 2019 by Rose Brandt

January 18, 2019

Congratulations to Katherine G. Morrissey and John-Michael H. Warner who were named BRLA Southwest Book Award recipients for their University of Arizona Press book Border Spaces: Visualizing the U.S.- Mexico Frontera. Since 1971 the Southwest Book Awards have been presented in recognition of outstanding books about the Southwest published each year in any genre (e.g. fiction, nonfiction, reference) and directed toward any audience (scholarly, popular, children). Original video and audio materials are also considered.

In Border Spaces, Katherine G. Morrissey, John-Michael H. Warner, and other essayists build on the insights of border dwellers, or fronterizos, and draw on two interrelated fields—border art history and border studies. The editors engage in a conversation on the physical landscape of the border and its representations through time, art, and architecture.

The University of Arizona Press