The winners have been announced for the Western Writers of America awards, with Thomas Cobb’s With Blood in Their Eyes nabbing the title of Best Western Long Novel and Geronimo by Robert M Utley securing a win in the Best Western Nonfiction-Biography category.
The wins mark Cobb’s second and Utley’s third.
2013 Spur Awards Winners and Finalists:
Best Western Short Novel:
Winner: Tucker’s Reckoning by Matthew Mayo
Finalist: Lonesome Animals by Bruce Holbert
Finalist: City of Rocks by Michael Zimmer
Best Western Long Novel:
Winner: With Blood in Their Eyes by Thomas Cobb
Finalist: The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
Finalist: Country of the Bad Wolfes by James Carlos Blake
Best Original Mass Market Paperback:
Winner: The Coyote Tracker by Larry Sweazy
Finalist: Redemption: Hunters by James Reasoner
Finalist: The Secret of Lodestar by Tim Champlin
Best First Novel:
Winner: Panhandle by Brett Cogburn
Finalist: Wide Open by Larry Bjornson
Finalist: The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
Best Western Nonfiction Biography:
Winner: Geronimo by Robert M. Utley
Finalist: Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford Reports the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War by Paul L. Hedren
Finalist: “That Fiend in Hell”: Soapy Smith in Legend by Catherine Holder Spude
Best Western Nonfiction Historical:
Winner: With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: Trails to the Mining West, 1849-1852 by Will Bagley
Finalist: Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers on the Upper Missouri, 1954-1868 by Doreen Chaky
Finalist: Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter and Custer’s Seventh Cavalry by Joan Nabseth Stevenson
Best Western Nonfiction Contemporary:
Winner: Desert Reckoning: A Town Sheriff, A Mojave Hermit and the Biggest Manhunt in Modern California History by Deanne Stillman
Finalist: Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement by Michael W. Childers
Finalist: Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West by Ruben Martinez
Best Western Short Fiction Story:
Winner: “The Hog Whisperer” by John Mort
Finalist “The Saint of Pox Island” by Susan K. Salzer
Finalist: “The Day Delgado Rode In” by Lori Van Pelt
Best Western Short Nonfiction:
Winner: “Marathoner Louis Tewanima and the Continuity of Hopi Running, 1908-1912″ by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
Finalist: “Libbie Custer: ‘A Wounded Thing Must Hide’” by Paul Andrew Hutton
Finalist “‘Wearing the Hempen Neck-Tie’: Lynching in Nebraska 1858-1919″ by James E. Potter
Best Western Juvenile Fiction:
Winner: Wide Open by Larry Bjornson
Finalist: Blooming Prairie by Candace Simar
Finalist: And There I’ll Be A Soldier by Johnny D. Boggs
Best Western Juvenile Nonfiction:
Winner: Light on the Prairie: Solomon D. Butcher, Photographer of Nebraska’s Pioneer Days by Nancy Plain
Finalist: The Great Bicycle Experiment: The Army’s Historic Black Bicycle Corps, 1896-97 by Kay Moore
Finalist: Strike!: Mother Jones & the Colorado Coal Field War by Lois Ruby
Storyteller Award:
Winner: Pecos Bill Invents the Ten-Gallon Hat by Kevin Strauss, illustrated by David Harrington
Finalist: The Adventures of Buffalo Joe and The Blackbird With the Broken Wing by Jamie Anne Blake
Finalist: Big Buckaroo and Moose, The Cow Dog by Rachelle “Rocky” Gibbons, illustrated by Jason Hutton
Best Western Drama Script (Fiction):
Winner: Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino
Finalist: Hatfields & McCoys by Bill Kerby, Ted Mann, Ronald Parker
Finalist: Justified by Graham Yost, Elmore Leonard, Dave Andron, Fred Golan, Benjamin Cavell, Taylor Elmore, Jon Worley, Nichelle D. Tramble, Ryan Farley, Ingrid Escajeda, V.J. Boyd
Best Western Documentary Script (Nonfiction):
Winner: The Dust Bowl by Dayton Duncan
Best Western Poem:
Winner: “Johnny Ringo” by Red Shuttleworth
Finalist: “Night Singer, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico” by Steve Fieffenbacher
Finalist: “Nat Maringo” by Robert Brown
Best Western Audiobook:
Winner: Ring of Fire by Cotton Smith
Finalist: Trouble in Texas by Tom Nichols
Best Western Song:
Winner: “Texas Is Burnin’” by Jim Jones
Winner: “Any Name Will Do” by Mary Kaye
Finalist: “The Last Real Cowboy in Old Santa Fe” by Jerry Faires
Source: Western Writers of America
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