Forsberg's 'Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild' wins book prize

"Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild" by Michael Forsberg with Dan O'Brien, David Wishart and Ted Kooser, is this year's winner of the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize from the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Center director James Stubbendieck made the announcement May 5 at the center's annual meeting.

Three broad geographic regions in "Great Plains" are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable images taken by Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled nearly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg's images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart, acclaimed writer Dan O'Brien, and a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser, the 13th poet laureate of the United States.

Forsberg said his concept for the book was developed more than four years ago. "I think sometimes there is an assumption in a picture-driven book that the words are secondary to the photos," he said. "I wanted the words to matter and have equal weight. I felt we needed a collection of voices and perspectives that spoke from years of experience and study and life on the Plains."

Judges for the book prize were UNL faculty members Mark Burbach, Margaret Jacobs and Andrew Jewell. Jewell said, "'Great Plains' intelligently combines compelling photographs with prose that is informative, funny and evocative. The book's power comes in the way these divergent forms and voices unify into a vision of tough-minded hopefulness about the future of the Great Plains. Though acknowledging and documenting the heartbreaking destruction of so much habitat, the book notes that the wilds of the Great Plains continue to linger."

Forsberg will receive a cash prize of $5,000 and will present a lecture on the topic of the book this fall at UNL. "Great Plains" was published by Chicago University Press. The book also has won the PROSE Award for Biological and Life Sciences from the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.

Forsberg earned a degree in geography with an emphasis in environmental studies at UNL and worked briefly as a seasonal ranger in the National Park Service before joining NEBRASKAland magazine as a staff photographer and writer. He worked at the magazine for six years before starting his own photography business and gallery. Forsberg and his wife and business partner, Patty, have developed exhibitions of photographs from his books. "Great Plains" is showing at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.

The Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize was created to emphasize the interdisciplinary importance of the Great Plains in today's publishing and educational market. Only first edition, full-length, nonfiction books published in 2009 were evaluated for the award. The other finalists were "Dakota Philosopher: Charles Eastman and American Indian Thought" by David Martinez (Minnesota Historical Society Press); "Sex, Murder, and the Unwritten Law: Courting Judicial Mayhem, Texas Style" by Bill Neal (Texas Tech University Press); and "North for the Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry" by Jim Norris (Minnesota Historical Society Press).

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 at (402) 472-3082 or visit its website, www.unl.edu/plains.

WRITER: Linda Ratcliffe