CENTRAL, Utah – Joseph M. Marshall III, an Oglala/Sicangu Lakota writer of nonfiction and fiction and a cultural and historical consultant and actor on many films, is the 2023 Owen Wister Award honoree for lifetime contributions to Western Literature, Western Writers of America (www.westernwriters.org) has announced. The award is scheduled to be presented at the 2023 WWA convention in Rapid City, South Dakota, June 21-24, when Marshall will also be inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, housed at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo. Born in 1945 and having grown ..read more

ENCAMPMENT, WY  – Western Writers of America is pleased to announce the winners in the 2022 Book Display Contest. Winning in the library category is the Locust Grove Public Library. The Dock Bookshop in Fort Worth, Texas, won for best Independent Bookstore Display and the National Mining Hall of Fame & Museum in Leadville, Colorado has won for best display in a museum gift shop.  These supporters of Western Literature will be recognized at the 2022 WWA Convention in Great Falls Montana during the Spur Finalist and Hall of Fame Luncheon on June 24. Each winning organization r ..read more

     TUCSON, Ariz. – David Heska Wanbli Weiden is getting his fourth Spur Award in three years, and bestselling novelists Michael Punke and C.J. Box are also 2022 winners. Presentations to winners and finalists are scheduled for June 22-25 during WWA’s convention in Great Falls, Mont.      Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, won for his short story “Skin,” published in Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction from 20 Authors of Color (Crooked Lane Books). Weiden’s Winter Counts&nbs ..read more

ENCAMPMENT, Wyo. – Irene Bennett Brown, a Kansas native known for her historical and juvenile novels, will receive the 2022 Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature, Western Writers of America has announced. “Irene Bennett Brown’s contribution to the Western genre is significant,” WWA President Chris Enss said. “She pulls readers into the stories of the Old West by means of true emotion and vivid detail. Her plots feature strong characters, such as Larnie in the book Skitterbrain and Jocelyn Royal in Miss Royal’s Mules. Like Irene, those Western heroes show stubborn d ..read more

In anticipation of Western Writers of America’s annual convention in the latter part of June, Western Writers of America is challenging booksellers, museum gift shop managers, and librarians to create a window or shelf display that highlight western authors and western musicians and their work. The store, library, and museum gift shop judged to have the best display will each win $500. WWA was incorporated in 1953 to promote the literature of the American West. Like the Western landscape itself, WWA and the books, songs, and stories produced by its members have evolved immensely. WWA boasts mo ..read more

Why Cows Need Cowboys  and Other Seldom-Told Tales from the American West – Edited by Nancy Plain and Rocky Gibbons 978-1-4930-5107-6 $19.95, Paperback / softback 978-1-4930-5106-9 $19.00, Electronic book text Western Writers of America’s first anthology for young readers is now available from TwoDot. In this collection of true tales of the West, we leave textbook history in the rearview mirror and take you on a tour of twenty seldom-told dramas, the kind you might stumble across only if you leave the main road to wander the detours and byways of the American story. Here you’ll meet ..read more

ENCAMPMENT, Wyo. – Robert M. Utley, the 91-year-old “Dean of Western History,” and David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota nation, are among the 2021 Spur Award winners, Western Writers of America has announced. Utley’s The Last Sovereigns: Sitting Bull and the Resistance of the Free Lakotas, published by the University of Nebraska Press, won for Best Historical Nonfiction. It is Utley’s fourth Spur. He previously won for Geronimo; Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers; and The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitt ..read more

Packing the West is a reading and educational enrichment program designed to inspire in students a curiosity about the history of the American West, an appreciation of its literature, and the desire to understand society at the time, and how it relates to today. One part of the project is a series of educational videos that will teach students about the importance of key events that occurred as the nation expanded westward. Packing the West documentaries will introduce students to the stories of the men, women, and children who journeyed, or lived, beyond the Mississippi and share tales of how ..read more

ENCAMPMENT, Wyo. – The international best-selling writing team of W. Michael and Kathleen O’Neal of Cody, Wyo., will receive the Western Writers of America 2021 Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature. The Gears, who are best known for their prehistory series of books, will also be inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, housed outside the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. “For more than three decades, Kathleen and Michael Gear have been bringing the past to vivid life with their books about the indigenous peoples. Bot ..read more

The 2021 Spur Awards Contest is now open. The rules and entry forms for Spur Awards are posted elsewhere on our website. If you have something to enter, please read the rules carefully and then submit your entry as soon as possible. However, due to delays in publishing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, WWA will waive the early deadline for material that was released, or set to be released before August 1. For the 2021 contest only, entries for anything published or produced anytime in 2020 will be accepted until Jan. 15, 2021. As the rules note, any entry that was first copyrighted and pub ..read more