Native Writers' Circle of the Americas

2008 First Book Award for Prose

Linda LeGarde Grover (Chippewa, Bois Forte Band of Minnesota {Nett Lake Reservation}) of Duluth, Minnesota is the winner of the 2008 First Book Awards competition in prose from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Ms. Grover, an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, wins the award for her collection of short stories-in-manuscript entitled "The Road Back to Sweetgrass," an inter-connected series of stories of several Chippewa women on a northern Minnesota reservation. She is also a poet. Her poetry collection, The.Indian.At.Indian.School, was the 2008 selection for the Sequoyah Research Center (University of Arkansas-Little Rock) Native Writers Series. As well, her poem, "Casualty Days," won Honorable Mention in the 2008 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers and is easily accessible on the internet. In addition to publishing poetry, she has published fiction, historical research, and a children's family history guide. She is a traditional powwow dancer, storyteller, and a grandmother.

2008 First Book Award for Poetry

Steve Russell (Cherokee) of Bloomington, Indiana, is the winner of the 2008 First Book Awards competition in poetry from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Professor Russell wins the award for his book-length manuscript, "Wicked Dew," a collection of poems which draw strongly from his observations of contemporary Native American issues and politics. He holds a doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of Texas. A long-time member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, he is widely known throughout Indian Country for his op-ed columns in Indian Country Today. His collection of essays, "Sequoyah Rising," on contemporary tribal policy, is currently under contract with Carolina Academic Press. His research has appeared in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Indian Quarterly, and Wicazo Sa Review. His poems have been published in South Dakota Review, The En'owkin Journal of First North American Peoples, and the Messenger Journal of Cherokee Literature.

2008 Lifetime Achievement Award

Robert J. Conley (Cherokee), of Cullowhee, North Carolina, is the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award winner from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Mr. Conley, Sequoyah Distinguished Professor of Cherokee Studies at Western Carolina University, is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist, and the author of more than fifty books. He was born in Cushing, Oklahoma, on December 29, 1940. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Midwestern University, in Wichita Falls, Texas. He has taught at Eastern Montana College, Bacone College, Morningside College, Southwest Missouri State University, and Northern Illinois University. He served as programs director of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, before turning to writing professionally and full-time in the mid-1980s. In 2007, he assumed his duties as an endowed professor at Western Carolina University. His many novels include Back to Malachi (1986), Ned Christie's War (1990), Mountain Windsong: A Novel of the Trail of Tears (1992), The Dark Way (1993), War Woman (1997), and Cherokee Dragon (2000); poetry collections include 21 Poems (1975), Adawosgi/Swimmer Wesley Snell (1980), The Rattlesnake Band and Other Poems (1984). He has garnered many literary awards in his career, among them the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America (for the novels Nickajack (1992) and The Dark Island (1995), and for his short story "Yellow Bird: An Imaginary Autobiography," from his collection of short fiction entitled The Witch of Goingsnake and Other Stories (1988). Earlier this year, Professor Conley was presented with the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book.

Professor Conley will be honored, along with the winners of the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas' First Book Awards for Poetry and Prose, during the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Festival at the University of Science and Art in Oklahoma, in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Specific places and times for all accompanying events -- book signing, reading, banquet, etc. -- will be announced at a later date.