Great Plains Studies announces Distinguished Book Prize finalists

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Center for Great Plains Studies has announced the finalists for this year's Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize.

The six books shortlisted by a panel of judges are "Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the High Plains" by William Ashworth (W.W. Norton Co.); "Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life" by Kingsley M. Bray (University of Oklahoma Press); "'Pictures Bring Us Messages': Photographs and Histories from the Kainai Nation" by Alison K. Brown and Laura Peers with members of the Kainai Nation (University of Toronto Press); "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin); "900 Miles from Nowhere: Voices from the Homestead Frontier" by Steven R. Kinsella (Minnesota Historical Society Press); and "Indians and Immigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trail" by Michael L. Tate (University of Oklahoma Press).

Ashworth, an award-winning freelance writer and author of numerous environmental and natural history books, lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Bray is senior bookseller at BMA Hammicks Medical Bookshop in Manchester, England. He has spent the past 20 years researching Lakota history and ethnology.

Brown is a research fellow with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Peers is a lecturer and curator with the Pitt Rivers Museum and the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford in England.

Egan is a national enterprise reporter for The New York Times. The recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, he lives in Seattle, Washington.

Kinsella was press secretary to former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) who now works as a news media consultant and public affairs strategist for conservation organizations. Raised on the northern prairie, he lives in St. Paul, Minn.

Tate, whose book focuses on the relations between Indians and emigrants on the overland trails, is professor of history and native American studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is also author of "The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West."

"Each of these books has what the judges were asked to look for -- first-edition books of nonfiction with a distinct focus on the Plains," said James Stubbendieck, director of the Center for Great Plains Studies. "The Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize was created to emphasize the interdisciplinary importance of the Great Plains in today's publishing and educational market."

The winner of the $1,000 cash prize will be announced May 3. The author will be invited to travel to UNL to present a lecture on the topic of the book. Only first-edition, full-length, nonfiction books published in 2006 were evaluated for the award. Nominations were made by publishers or authors, but no more than five titles by any one publisher could be submitted.

The Center for Great Plains Studies is an interdisciplinary, intercollegiate, regional research and teaching program chartered in 1976 by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. Its mission is to promote a greater understanding of the people, culture, history, and environment of the Great Plains through a variety of research, teaching, and outreach programs.

For more information, contact the Center for Great Plains Studies at (402) 472-3082 or visit its Web site (www.unl.edu/plains).

CONTACTS: James Stubbendieck, Director, Center for Great Plains Studies, (402) 472-3082

Linda Ratcliffe, Publications Specialist, Center for Great Plains Studies, (402) 472-3965