The Nebraska Book Awards program, sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book (NCB) and supported by the Nebraska Library Commission, recognizes and honors books that are written by Nebraska authors, published by Nebraska publishers, set in Nebraska, or concerning Nebraska.
The winners of the 2009 Nebraska Book Awards (books published in 2008) will be presented at the Nebraska Center for the Book’s Annual Meeting and Nebraska Book Festival in Lincoln on November 14, 2009.
2009 award winners to be honored at the Nebraska Book Festival are:
Cover/Design/Illustration
BVH Architects: Forty Years, by Suzanne Smith Arney
Publisher: Omaha Books
Designer: Elizabeth Murphy
Cover Photo: Fashid Assassi
Cover/Design/Illustration Honor
The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, by Stew Magnuson
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Designer: Lindsay Starr
Cover Photo: John Vachon
Fiction
Exiles, by Ron Hansen
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Nonfiction
The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, by Stew Magnuson
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Nonfiction Honor
Nebraska's Cowboy Trail, by Keith Terry
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Poetry
Geographia, by James Magorian
Publisher: Black Oak Press
Books published in 2009 will be eligible for the 2010 Awards program. To receive notification of the 2009 Book Awards program, contact Maria Medrano-Nehls, 402-471-2045 or 800-307-2665.
October 15 is the deadline for organizations, publishers and vendors to reserve a table at the 2009 Nebraska Book Festival.
The full-day festival, free and open to the public, will be held Nov. 14 at the Nebraska State Historical Society’s Nebraska History Museum in downtown Lincoln. It will include readings from a selection of Nebraskans whose books were published in 2009, including Mary Pipher, Sean Doolittle, Harley Jane Kozak, Ted Kooser and photographer Michael Forsberg.
“I am interested in their opinion on the state of contemporary poetry, responses they are getting, and their views on how poetry has changed over the years,” Kloefkorn said of Kooser and Welch. “But I am also interested in what the audience sees as the pertinent questions about poetry, what they think about poetry on the Internet and their discussions with others about how online poetry influences them.”
Writing, reading, author and book organizations, publishers, agents, and book-related vendors are invited to exhibit and sell their products, publications and services during the festival. Commercial and non-profit tables will be set up in the front foyer of the Nebraska History Museum. Each exhibitor and vendor will receive one 4-foot table or one 6-foot table.
Non-profits that are organizational members of the Nebraska Center for the Book can exhibit free of charge. Table reservations for non-members cost $25-$40. Tables will be assigned on a first-come basis.
The 2009 festival is not accepting table reservations from bookstores at this time. The festival will feature one bookstore each year on a rotating basis. Lee Booksellers, this year’s featured bookstore, will manage book sales and host author signings. Other bookstores interested in this opportunity are encouraged to contact Mary Jo Ryan, festival director, at 402-471-3434 or (800) 307-2665 to be added to the rotation.
For an exhibitor/vendor registration form and complete listing of festival authors and activities, visit http://www.nebraskabookfestival.org/get_involved/get_involved.htm#exhibitors.
Source: Nebraska Humanities Council
The 2009 Nebraska Book Festival in downtown Lincoln will feature a conversation between two-time U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Nebraska State Poet William Kloefkorn, and award-winning Nebraska poet Don Welch.
The conversation, free and open to the public, will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Nebraska State Historical Society’s Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln. Kooser, Kloefkorn and Welch will discuss among themselves and with the audience insights on reading and writing poetry.
“I am interested in their opinion on the state of contemporary poetry, responses they are getting, and their views on how poetry has changed over the years,” Kloefkorn said of Kooser and Welch. “But I am also interested in what the audience sees as the pertinent questions about poetry, what they think about poetry on the Internet and their discussions with others about how online poetry influences them.”
Kooser, Kloefkorn and Welch will also talk about how they have supported each other’s work as a writing community through publication, reading, teaching and friendship.
“By being from small-town Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, we supported each other over the years with our interest in the local and how very ordinary things can have an extraordinary significance,” Welch said. “Along with its other expressions, poetry can get at the heart of that.”
“All three of us were born in the same decade and share a lot of experience about what it was like to be a child of parents born very early in the new century, and to have been raised in the heart of rural America,” Kooser said. “The world has changed immensely since we were children and we have all remarked upon that in our work, which we have shared over the years.”
Ted Kooser, U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006, has authored 12 collections of poetry and essays, including “Delights & Shadows” which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. His “Lights on a Ground of Darkness,” collected stories of his mother’s Iowa family, will be released in paperback by Bison Books (University of Nebraska Press) Sept. 1. He teaches as presidential professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
William Kloefkorn, emeritus professor of English at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, was named Nebraska state poet by the Nebraska Legislature in 1982. His publications include many collections of poetry, four memoirs and two collections of short fiction. “Restoring the Burnt Child,” his second memoir, was the 2008 One Book One Nebraska selection. His fourth memoir, “Breathing in the Fullness of Time,” was published by the University of Nebraska Press in April 2009.
Don Welch, Reynolds professor of poetry emeritus at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, is the author of more than 20 collections of poetry and over 300 poems published in magazines, journals and anthologies. He has won several national and regional awards, including the Mildred Bennett Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book and Sower Award in the Humanities from the Nebraska Humanities Council, both in 2004. His latest collection is “When Memory Gives Dust a Face,” published by Sandhills Press in April 2008.
Don Welch, Reynolds professor of poetry emeritus at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, is the author of more than 20 collections of poetry and over 300 poems published in magazines, journals and anthologies. He has won several national and regional awards, including the Mildred Bennet Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book and Sower Award in the Humanities from the Nebraska Humanities Council, both in 2004. His latest collection is “When Memory Gives Dust a Face,” published by Sandhills Press in April 2008.
The Nebraska Book Festival will include readings from Nebraska authors whose books were published in 2009, including poets Hilda Raz, JV Brummels and Allison Hedge Coke. For more information visit www.nebraskabookfestival.org.
The festival is presented by the Nebraska Center for the Book, Nebraska Humanities Council, Nebraska Library Commission and the Nebraska State Historical Society, with support from the Duncan Family Trust, Lee Booksellers, University of Nebraska Press and Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
Source: Nebraska Humanities Council
Winners will be announced in September 2009.
The 2009 Nebraska Book Awards program, sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book (NCB), will recognize and honor books that are written by Nebraska authors, published by Nebraska publishers, set in Nebraska, or relate to Nebraska.
Books published in 2008, as indicated by the copyright date, are eligible for nomination. They must be professionally published, have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), and be bound. Books may be entered in one or more of the following categories: Nonfiction, Fiction, Children/Young Adult, Cover/Design/Illustration, Anthology, and Poetry. Certificates will be awarded to the winners in each category. Award winners will be presented at the Nebraska Center for the Book’s Annual Book Festival, November 14, 2009, in downtown Lincoln.
The entry fee is $40 per book and per category entered. Deadline for entries is June 30, 2009. Entry forms are available here, or contact Maria Medrano-Nehls, 402-471-2045, 800-307-2665, for further information. Enter by sending the entry form, three copies of the book, and the entry fee to NCB Book Awards Competition, Nebraska Library Commission, The Atrium, 1200 N Street, Suite 120, Lincoln, NE 68508-2023.