More details on the recipients of the 2012 Governor’s Arts Awards

More details about the 2012 Governor's Arts Awards recipients:

Advocacy for Visual Arts (AVA) Center in Gillette, musician Jalan Crossland of Ten Sleep and visual artist and educator Lynn Munns of Casper will be honored at the annual Awards Gala Feb. 8, 2013, at Little America in Cheyenne.

                AVA Center opened in 1998, and now offers a slate of classes conducted by professional and volunteer instructors including pottery, mosaics, pine needle weaving, painting, drawing, felting and tile glazing. AVA recently began the “Uncorked” series as an evening for friends, dating couples, and co-workers to get together to create a piece of art while partaking in fellowship and a favorite wine. “Little Tykes” and “Van Gogh Kiddies” are just two of the many classes AVA offers for children. 

Singer/songwriter Jalan Crossland writes music inspired by his Wyoming roots. His prowess on the banjo and guitar and ability to create humorously honest lyrics dazzles audiences from Nashville, Key West and New Orleans, to towns across Wyoming. He performs every August at the NoWoodstock Festival in his home town. Crossland has toured as the opening act with alternative country legend Robert Earl Keen, and has appeared on television and radio shows. He has been profiled in The New York Times, No Depression and Fingerstyle Guitar. His latest solo CD is Portrait of a Fish.

Casper potter and arts educator Lynn Munns began teaching at Casper College in 1971. During his tenure, he expanded the ceramics program to include an array of course offerings, new equipment and increased studio space. Munns served as the chairman of the Visual Arts Department from 1973-1980, then as chairman of the Fine Arts Division until his retirement in 2006. He also directed the Goodstein Visual Arts Gallery. In 1989, he received two outstanding educator awards. He has served as a board member for state and national arts organizations, including the Wyoming Arts Council.

For more information, contact Camellia El-Antably at the Wyoming Arts Council, 307-777-5305 or camellia.elantably@wyo.gov.
This post has been updated.

AVA, Jalan Crossland and Lynn Munns are 2012 Governor's Arts Awards honorees

Announcing the 2012 Wyoming Governor's Arts Awards recipients: Advocacy for Visual Arts (AVA) Center of Gillette, musician Jalan Crossland of Ten Sleep and artist and educator Lynn Munns of Casper. Congratulations! See you all at the awards gala Feb. 8 in Cheyenne. More details soon !

Two Wyoming authors takes home High Plains Book Awards

This news comes from a press release from the High Plains Book Awards in Billings, Mont.:

Winners of the prestigious 2012 High Plains Book Awards, a project of the Parmly Billings Library, were announced Saturday, October 20, in Billings, Mont., at a banquet held at the Yellowstone Art Museums. Award winners included Shann Ray's American Masculine, which won in two categories: Best First Book and Best Short Stories. Each winner received a $500 cash prize.  Other winners included Hand Raised: The Barns of Montana by Chere Jiusto & Christine W. Brown for Best Nonfiction, The Ringer by Jenny Shank for Best Fiction, Songs of Unreason by Jim Harrison for Best Poetry, Married Into It by Patricia Frolander for Best Woman Writer, and Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation by Sara Wiles for Best Art & Photography. Emeritus Award winner was Tom McGuane.

Eighty-eight books were nominated for the 2012 High Plains Book Awards in seven categories from publishers in the United States and Canada. Finalists were selected after each nominated book war read and evaluated by community readers. Winners were selected by a panel of published writers with connections to the High Plains. Many finalists and winners participated in a day-long series of readings at the Yellowstone Art Museum as part of the High Plains BookFest. All nominated books were published for the first time in 2011.

Award sponsors include the Parmly Billings Library, Friends of the Parmly Billings Library, Montana State University-Billings, the Parmly Billings Library Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, the Writer's Voice of the Billings Family YMCA, the Yellowstone Art Museum, and the Zonta Club of Billings.

More information about the High Plains Book Awards is available at: http://highplainsbookawards.org.  Nominations for the 2013 High Plains Book Awards will be accepted January 14, 2013-March 15, 2013 for books first published in 2012.

About the High Plains Book Awards
The Parmly Billings Library Board has established the High Plains Book Awards to recognize regional authors and/or literary works which examine and reflect life on the High Plains including the states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.

Here are details about the Wyoming winners:

MARRIED INTO IT by Patricia Frolander
Best Woman Writer
Married Into It
Patricia Frolander
High Plains Press

What happens when a young urban woman marries into a fourth generation rural ranching family and must learn the traditions, customs, and lifestyle of the land, all under the scrutinizing eye of its close knit community? Author Patricia Frolander's clear-eyed poems chronicle her years of challenges and triumphs, bruises and breakthroughs, as she moves from outsider to neighbor.

Patricia Frolander, Wyoming's poet laureate, tries to balance family, ranching, and writing and have a passion for each of them. She and her husband own his family ranch in the Black Hills of Wyoming where ties to land and livestock have provided a wonderful variety of subjects to journal and pen.

ARAPAHO JOURNEYS: PHOTOGRAPHS AND STORIES FROM THE WIND RIVER RESERVATION by Sara Wiles
Best Art & Photography
Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation
Sara Wiles
University of Oklahoma Press

Award-winning photographer Sara Wiles captures that life on film and in words in Arapaho Journeys, an inside look at thirty years of Northern Arapaho life on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming.  Through more than 100 images and 40 essays, Wiles creates a visual and verbal mosaic of contemporary Northern Arapaho culture. Depicted in the photographs are people Wiles met at Wind River while she was a social worker, anthropology student, and adopted member of an Arapaho family.

Wiles's essays weave together tribal history, personal narratives, and traditional knowledge to describe modern-day reservation life and little-known aspects of Arapaho history and culture, including naming ceremonies and cultural revitalization efforts. This work broaches controversial topics, as well, including the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.

Sara Wiles is an independent photographer, writer, and scholar who holds a master s degree in anthropology from Indiana University. Her photographs, including the images published here for the  first time, have been exhibited nationally. She is the recipient of a Wyoming Governor's Arts Award.

Katharine Coles will judge 2013 Blanchan/Doubleday writing competition

Katharine Coles in Antarctica

Katharine Coles will serve as the judge for the 2013 Neltje Blanchan and Frank Nelson Doubleday writing awards.

These awards are designed to bring attention to writers who have not yet received wide recognition for their work, and to support emerging writers at crucial times in their careers. Poets, fiction writers, essayists, and script writers who have published no more than one book in each genre and who are not students or faculty members are invited to apply by submitting manuscripts and an entry form by the deadline.

The Neltje Blanchan Award, $1,000, is given for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script which is informed by a relationship with the natural world.

The Frank Nelson Doubleday Award, $1,000, is given for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script written by a woman author.

POSTMARK DEADLINE IS NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Applications are being mailed today to those on the Wyoming Arts Council literary arts lists. A printable application is available on the WAC web site at http://www.wyomingartscouncil.org.

Coles will travel to Wyoming next spring or summer for a reading with the Blanchan and Doubleday awardees. Details will be available in February 2013. 

Katharine Coles’ fifth and sixth collections of poems, The Earth Is Not Flat and Flight, are forthcoming in 2013 and 2015 from Red Hen Press.  Her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Image, Seneca Review, North American Review, Southwest Review, DIAGRAM, and Ascent.  In 2009-10, she served as the inaugural director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute for the Poetry Foundation. She is a professor at the University of Utah, where she founded and co-directs the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature. She is a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow.

In 2010, she traveled to Antarctica to write poems under the auspices of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Here is Coles speaking about her trip to Antarctica and how it influenced her writing:

In 2010, I was in Antarctica for a month during the Astral summer, returning home on the solstice that marks the Southern Hemisphere’s longest day and the Northern Hemisphere’s shortest.  I wanted to go the Antarctica for precisely the reason many people though I was crazy to do so: because it’s about as far “out there” as a person can get without actually leaving the planet.  In my own case, the voyage included a four-day boat trip each way across the Drake Passage, the world’s most notorious ocean crossing.  It was wonderful.  As a poet, I am most inspired by the places in which I am most foreign and least comfortable—and I’ve never been more foreign or less comfortable than when looking up sixty feet from the bottom of a trough to the top of its wave. 

Of course, while I was on the ice I thought and wrote about penguins and krill, about lichens and global climate change and the fragility of ecosystems.  I also thought and wrote about perception and illusion, about how we know what we think we know.

Though I have always written about nature, I haven’t until recently thought of myself as a “nature poet.”  This is partly because I’ve always been most interested in nature in the sense that scientists conceive it—as “Nature” with a capital “N,” which includes not only what we can observe with our senses also the deeper reality that gives rise to it, which is the proper object of study for physicists, mathematicians, neurologists, and philosophers.  In Antarctica, I was constantly dumbfounded by the gorgeous strangeness of the landscape around me, which was open to the gaze.  And, as I learned about the extent to which that landscape was an illusion made of light reflected and refracted by water, ice, and sky, I became even more astonished.  If what I could see was beauty, what was there to be understood was Beauty.  They are the same, but not exactly.

Wyoming Poet Laureate's book of poetry wins WILLA Literary Award

This good news comes from Nancy Curtis of High Plains Press in Glendo: Patricia Frolander's poetry book, MARRIED INTO IT, has won the WILLA Literary Award from Women Writing the West. The WILLA is named for Willa Cather, one of America's best writers. It will be presented in Albuquerque in October and Pat is going to be able to be there. High Plains Press is pleased to be the publisher.

More info on the Wyoming Arts Council poetry fellowships

On Monday, the Wyoming Arts Council announced the recipients of this year’s creative writing fellowships in poetry. Here is some additional information on the three winners and two honorable mentions.

The three winning poets are Matt Daly and Claudia Mauro of Jackson and W. Dale Nelson of Laramie. They each will receive a $3,000 award plus a $500 stipend to travel to Casper to read their work at the annual fellowship reading on Sept. 14 at the Equality State Book Festival. They will be joined at the reading by fellowship judge Brian Turner, a soldier-poet who is the author of two poetry collections, Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise.

The fellowship judge also selected two writers for honorable mentions. They are Michael McIrvin of Cheyenne and Kristen Gunther of Laramie.

Matt Daly is the author of Wild Nature and the Human Spirit: A Field Guide to Journal Writing in Nature. His poetry, short fiction and essays have been published in To Everything on Earth, Stories of the Wild and Ahead of Their Time: Wyoming Voices for Wilderness. He grew up in Jackson Hole, teaches creative writing workshops for tweens, teens, and adults, and is a member of the Wyoming Arts Council's artist roster.

Claudia Mauro is founder and director of Whit Press, which publishes work by writers from ethnic, economic and social minorities, young writers and first-time authors. Before moving to Wyoming, she worked for nearly 20 years as a marine science tech and a backcountry pilot in support of private and public environmental projects in Alaska. She's published two poetry collections: Stealing Fire and Reading the River.

W. Dale Nelson’s poetry has been published in The New Yorker, The Nation and other magazines in the U.S., Australia and Canada. Finishing Line Press in Kentucky is publishing his chapbook, Range of Motion. He won a WAC poetry fellowship in 2004 and was the recipient of a 2010 Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award for Nature Writers.

Michael McIrvin is the author of five poetry collections, including Optimism Blues: Poems Selected and New from Cedar Hill Publications, an essay collection and two novels. He's a free-lance editor. Kristen Gunther was born in Maryland and has called southeast Wyoming her home since 2009. She's a recent graduate of the University of Wyoming’s MFA program in creative writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cutbank and High Country News and has aired on Wyoming Public Radio.

This is the 27th year for the creative writing fellowships sponsored by the Wyoming Arts Council. Next year’s category will be creative nonfiction. Applications will be available in spring 2013.

For more information, contact Michael Shay at 307-777-5234 or mike.shay@wyo.gov

Governor's Capitol Art Exhibition purchase awards announced

Purchase award winner Michele Farrier of Alta, "Stateline Road," pastel, 18" x 20", $800.00. Michelle's work
 will be on display as part of the Governor's Capitol Art Exhibition
 this weekend at the Hynds Building in Cheyenne.  

This was announced Tuesday by the Wyoming State Museum:

Purchase Award recipients for the 2012 Governor’s Capitol Art Exhibition have been announced, and will be recognized during the show’s awards presentation ceremony Saturday, June 30 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Hynds Building in downtown Cheyenne.

An exhibition of all 70 artistic pieces included in this year’s show will be on display at the Hynds Building June 30 and July 1, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

“We will be purchasing eight artworks from this year’s show,” said the show’s coordinator and curator, David L. Newell. “That is up from six from last year’s exhibit. This year’s show also includes 70 artworks, as opposed to 43 last year.”

This year’s eight winning artists include: Mack Brislawn, of Laramie, for his painting “Somewhere in the Powder River Basin;” Travis Ivey, of Laramie, for his painting “Spring Thaw on the Little Laramie;” Tony James, of Cheyenne, for his photograph “High Plains Thunder;” and Georgia Rowswell, of Cheyenne, for her mixed media composition “Paint Pot – Yellowstone.”

GCAE purchase award: Georgia Rowswell, Cheyenne, "Paint Point-Yellowstone,"
mixed media - compressed fiber, 21" x 21", $1,500.00

Also included are Shane Steiss, of Green River, for his mixed media composition “Aspen #14;” Michele Farrier, of Alta, for her pastel “Stateline Road;” Michael Flicek of Casper for his photograph “Prehistory Revealed;” and Joy Keown, of Laramie, for her painting “Rising From the Plains.”

“In a Hard Place,” a painting by Laramie’s Jerry Glass, received the Juror’s Choice Award.

“All of this year’s winning artworks have distinct Wyoming themes, in addition to being stunning works of art.” commented Newell.

The Governor’s Capitol Art Exhibition is an annual juried group show. All the remaining artworks in the Hynds Building show are for sale, as are the works in the adjoining Artist Alley. All sales benefit the purchase fund for the permanent art collection at the Wyoming State Museum.

Established under an initiative by Governor Jim Geringer and organized under the auspices of the Wyoming Arts Council and the Wyoming State Museum, the Governor’s Capitol Art Exhibition forms a collection of original Wyoming regional art for display in state offices. Works receiving Purchase Awards join this growing collection of prestigious art. The state’s five elected officials and representatives from other state agencies participated in the program to select the Purchase Award winners.

Another GCAE 2012 purchase award goes to Shane Steiss of Green River
for "Aspen #14," mixed media collage, 48" x 24", $500.00

Sara Wiles and Pat Frolander are High Plains Book Awards finalists

After the review of 86 nominated books, 19 finalists have been chosen for 7 categories in the 2012 High Plains Book Awards. The books were reviewed and ranked by volunteer readers throughout Billings, Mont. The books by finalists in each category have been send to professional authors in the US and Canada. The authors come from eleven different states – Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Texas, Maine, Washington, Iowa, Connecticut, Arizona and Montana as well as the Canadian providences of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Winner is each category will receive a $500 cash prize.

Two Wyoming writers made the final list of 19:

Best Art & Photography category: Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation, Sara Wiles, Lander, Wyoming
Best Woman Writer category: Married Into It, Patricia Frolander, Sundance, Wyoming

Sara has been awarded the Wyoming Govenor's Arts Award and Pat is Wyoming's poet leaureate.

The High Plains Book Awards and BookFest will take place October 18-20, 2012. There will be a reception for the finalists on Friday, October 19, at the Babcock Theatre, followed by a public reading. All the finalists are invited to read at the Yellowstone Art Museum on Saturday, October 20 as a part of the 10th annual High Plains BookFest. The High Plains Book Award Banquet will also be held at the Yellowstone Art Museum later that night. Readings are free and open to the public. Tickets for the banquet will be available later this year.

The Parmly Billings Library Board established the High Plains Book Awards in 2006. The awards were established to recognize regional authors and/or literary works which examine and reflect life on the High Plains including the states of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.

Wind River Reservation's North Bear drum group wins National Hand Drum prize

North Bear drum group from the Wind River Reservation wins 2012 National Hand Drum prize in Albuquerque NM this past weekend.

Deadline is June 8 for Wyoming Arts Council poetry fellowships

The postmark deadline is June 8 for the Wyoming Arts Council creative writing fellowships in poetry.

To apply, you must be a Wyoming resident, 18 or older, and not enrolled as a full-time student pursuing high school, college or university art-related degrees. There is no entry fee.

Up to three, $3,000 awards will be given. Winning poets also will receive a $500 stipend to attend the Equality State Book Festival in Casper Sept. 14-15 and read from their work with fellowship judge, Brian Turner.

Turner is a soldier-poet and the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005). His work is drawn from his seven years in the U.S. Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner was also featured in Operation Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea.

At the book festival in Casper, Turner will participate on a panel about soldier-writers with Luis Carlos Montalvan, U.S. Army Iraq War veteran and author of Until Tuesday: The Story of a Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him.

Printable applications are available on the Wyoming Arts Council web site at http://www.wyomingartscouncil.org/. To receive in the mail, call the WAC at 307-777-7742. For more information, contact Michael Shay, 307-777-5234 or mike.shay@wyo.gov.

Indie Music Awards winner to perform at Donkey Creek Festival in Gillette

This announcement comes from the good people at the Donkey Creek Festival in Gillette: Tell everyone you know: Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three won (in a tie) for best Americana album at the 11th annual Independent Music Awards! They're playing Saturday, June 23rd at the Donkey Creek Festival!

WY Game and Fish names winners in 29th annual Conservation Stamp competition

This  just gives a real life image
of what a Greater Short-horned
Lizard looks like, and does not
represent any visual art images
that were entered in the contest.

A reception, awards ceremony, sales and art show was held at the Cheyenne Wyoming Game and Fish headquarters on April 13, 2012 to name the winners in the 2013 Wyoming Conservation Stamp Art Compeition, featuring the Greater Short-Horned Lizard.

Linda Johnson of Riverton, a Wyoming Arts Council roster artist, received 3rd place for her water color entry. She quotes, "I felt very honored, as there were a lot of really great entries."

                                                  

Nominations for 2013 Community Spirit Awards are open

DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS IS MAY 31, 2011

The Community Spirit Awards is a national fellowship award for American Indian artists. First Peoples Fund chooses honorees for their commitment to sustaining the cultural values of native people. The process of bringing spirit back to community is an important responsibility for artists - it is part of a sacred honor system. First Peoples Fund works to strengthen that honor system by recognizing these exceptional artists for knowing themselves, honoring others, and sustaining spirit in their own communities.

Nominees must be:
Practicing artists of demonstrated maturity in their field.
Continually practicing artists for a minimum of 10 years.
Documented affiliate of a United States tribe. (Native Alaska or Hawaii included!)
Note: In addition to Visual Arts, First Peoples recognizes contemporary and traditional forms of Performing Arts and Literary Arts.

Fellowships will be awarded to artists who demonstrate:
An artistic practice that passes on the traditions and the life ways of the people.
A commitment to building the strength of native communities by sharing their skills and talents with others in their respective communities; and
Deeply rooted and maintain direct ties to their tribal community.

Nomination Procedure:
Nominate online at First Peoples Fund or send a postcard to include complete names and addresses of both nominee and nominator to PO Box 2977, Rapid City, SD 57709.
Nominated candidates must be from an American Indian community.
Applications will be mailed out after nomination deadline has passed.

Selection Process and Expectations:
A national selection committee will review nominees and select awardees from those that meet the outlined qualifications.
Fellowship recipients will receive $5,000 designed to give them the opportunity to "practice their art."

First Peoples Fund
PO Box 2977
Rapid City, SD 57709
605.348.0324
http://www.firstpeoplesfund.org/

2012 Visual Arts Fellowship Awards anounced by Wyoming Arts Council

At a Fellowship Awards Banquet during last weekend's CLICK! Symposium for Visual Artists in Pinedale, the Wyoming Arts Council announced the 2012 Visual Arts Fellowship Recipients and Honorable Mentions. Work by all of these artists, plus next year's Fellowship Recipients and Honorable Mentions, will be included in the next Biennial Fellowship Exhibition which will be hosted by the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper in the fall of 2013.

The 2012 Fellowship Recipients are:  

Joe Arnold, painter from Laramie
Chuck Kimmerle, photographer from Casper
Jenny Wuerker, painter from Buffalo

Honorable Mentions were given to: 
Suzanne Morlock from Wilson who creates sculptures from recycled materials
Cat Urbigkit, photographer from Pinedale

The Jurors for the 2012 Visual Arts Fellowships were:  
Leanne Goebel, an arts writer based in Pagosa Springs, Colo.
Napoleon Jones-Henderson, an artist, educator, activist and "Citizen of the Universe" from Boston
Karen Rogers, a gallerist and artist consultant from Santa Fe, N.M.

The jurors, who made their selections at an all-day jury process on Friday, March 30, were all impressed by the depth and breadth of the work by Wyoming artists.  From painting, sculpture, ceramics and photography through environmental art and film, the artist entries were varied and exciting.  While even the jurors were surprised at their final selection of more traditional artists this year, they were very inspired by the contemporary work being done in Wyoming.  

The three jurors, along with Lisa Hatchadoorian, Art Curator for the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, held one-on-one meetings with artists and art students on Sunday morning to review the artists' work and offer constructive criticism, ideas and encouragement.

Soldier-poet Brian Turner is judge for 2013 WAC creative writing fellowships in poetry

Brian Turner will be the judge for the 2013 Wyoming Arts Council creative writing fellowships in poetry. He is a soldier-poet who is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005) which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the U.S. Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner's poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner was also featured in Operation Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea. In 2009, Turner was selected as one of 50 United States Artists Fellows.

At the Casper College Literary Conference Sept. 14-15, 2012, Brian Turner will read from his work together with the fellowship winners. He also will participate on a panel about soldier-writers with Luis Carlos Montalvan, U.S. Army Iraq War veteran and author of "Until Tuesday: The Story of a Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him."

Here’s what critics had to say about Here, Bullet:

 "In sharp, straightforward, yet lyrical language, Turner exposes the many costs of war.” — Library Journal

“The day of the first moonwalk, my father's college literature professor told his class, ‘Someday they'll send a poet, and we'll find out what it's really like.’ Turner has sent back a dispatch from a place arguably more incomprehensible than the moon—the war in Iraq—and deserves our thanks...” — New York Times Book Review

Printed fellowship applications have been mailed to those of the WAC creative writing fellowship list. Printable apps will also be available next week on the WAC blog and web site.

The postmark deadline is June 8, 2012.

For more information, contact Michael Shay, 307-777-5234 or mike.shay@wyo.gov, or visit the WAC web site at www.wyomingartscouncil.org.

And the Wrangler statuette for best poetry book of 2012 goes to...

Pat Frolander of Sundance for her book, “Married Into It." Pat is the Wyoming Poet Laureate and will be in Cheyenne March 5-6 to serve as a judge for the annual Poetry Out Loud competition. She will be attending the Wrangler awards ceremony in Oklahoma City in April. Here are the details:

On April 20-21, attend this black-tie presentation of Wrangler Awards for the year's best Western movies, television, literature and music. Inductees to the Hall of Great Westerners and the Hall of Great Western Performers are honored along with the recipient of the Chester A. Reynolds Memorial Award. Celebrity emcee and award presenters add glamour to this banquet. Reservations required (405) 478-2250, Ext. 219. 

First presented in 1961, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Western Heritage Awards were established to honor and encourage the legacy of those whose works in literature, music, film, and television reflect the significant stories of the American West. The awards program also recognizes inductees into the prestigious Hall of Great Westerners and the Hall of Great Western Performers as well as the recipient of the Chester A. Reynolds Memorial Award, named in honor of the Museum’s founder. Each honoree receives a Wrangler, an impressive bronze sculpture of a cowboy on horseback. 

NEA podcast: Rita Dove, new National Medal of Arts recipient

Rita Dove with President Barack Obama at the National Medal of Arts ceremony Feb. 13

Listen to podcast by internationally-acclaimed poet Rita Dove at http://www.arts.gov/artworks/?p=12146

Early registration deadline Feb. 15 for Governor's Arts Awards gala

Early registration deadline Feb. 15 (tomorrow) for Governor's Arts Awards gala Feb. 24 at Little America. Register here.

Western Writers of America select Nancy Curtis of High Plains Press for 2012 Lariat Award

Candy Moulton shared this info today on Facebook:

The Western Writers of America (WWA) Board of Directors met last weekend in Albuquerque. A number of actions were taken including this one: The 2012 recipient of the Lariat Award, given to a publishing industry professional for outstanding support of WWA and Literature of the West, is High Plains Press publisher Nancy Curtis of Glendo, Wyoming. Congratulations Nancy! WWA will recognize High Plains and Nancy during the Convention June 12-16 at the Marriott Hotel in Albuquerque.

Results announced for 2012 Blanchan & Doubleday creative writing competition

The Wyoming Arts Council is pleased to announce the winners and honorable mentions in the 2012 Blanchan & Doubleday writing competition.

The winner of the Neltje Blanchan award for nature writing goes to George J. Vlastos of Casper. His submission was entitled "Out There -- 9 Poems." George teaches language arts at Star Lane Academy in Casper. He stresses performance poetry in the classroom and every year brings his students to the Poetry Out Loud competition in Cheyenne. He serves as emcee for poetry slams held at the Equality State Book Festival and the Casper College Literary Conference.

Winner of the Frank Nelson Doubleday award for women writers is Mary Beth Baptiste of Laramie. Her creative nonfiction manuscript was entitled “Singing Horses.” She worked for a number of years as a wildlife biologist in Grand Teton National Park. Her work has been published in Newsweek, Vermont Literary Review, Copper Nickel and Wyoming Wildlife magazine. She also works part-time as a technical writer.

Each of the winners will receive a $1,000 prize.

Judge for the competition was Susan Tweit, a nature writer from Salida, Colo.

Honorable mentions in the Blanchan category go to poet Matt Daly of Jackson and fiction writer Rosemarie London of Laramie. Doubleday honorable mentions go to creative nonfiction writer Patricia Stuart of Powell and creative nonfiction writer Lynn Carlson of Cheyenne.

The Blanchan/Doubleday awards were established in 1989 with an endowment from Neltje, an artist and arts patron in Banner, Wyo.

They are designed to bring attention to writers who have not yet received wide recognition for their work, and to support emerging writers at crucial times in their careers. Poets, fiction writers, essayists, and script writers who have published no more than one book in each genre and who are not students or faculty members are invited to apply.

Applications are available each fall from the Wyoming Arts Council.

FMI: Contact Michael Shay, WAC individual artist program specialist, 307-777-5234 or mike.shay@wyo.gov