Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas

2009 First Book Award for Prose

JudyLee Oliva (Chickasaw) of Choctaw, Oklahoma is the winner of the 2009 First Book Awards competition in prose from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Dr. Oliva wins the award for her collection of three plays-in-manuscript entitled “Te Ata and Other Plays.” She was born in Oklahoma City. She has a bachelor’s degree from East Central State University, an MFA from the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD in theater and drama from Northwestern University. The author of more than twenty plays, approximately half of which have been produced, Dr. Oliva is also a poet and drama scholar. Her play, “Te Ata,” premiered in Chickasha, Oklahoma in 2006, after having won the Five Civilized Tribes Best American Indian Musical Play in 2000. Other plays---“99 Cents Dreams,” “On the Showroom Floor,” and “Fading Alice and the Sandhill Cranes”---have won such awards as the James H. Wilson Playwriting Competition, the Women Playwrights Initiative Competition, the Five Civilized Tribes’ Allece Garrard Best Play Prize, and Generic Theatre’s Best New Play. In 2006, she was honored by the Chickasaw Nation as one of the “Dynamic Chickasaw Women” of the year.

2009 First Book Award for Poetry

L. Rain Cranford-Gomez (Louisiana Choctaw-Creek/Louisiana Creole/Nakoda Metis/Celtic American) of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is the winner of the 2009 First Book Awards competition in poetry from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Ms. Cranford-Gomez wins the award for her collection of poetry, “Smoked Mullet Cornbread Memory.” Born in Tampa, Florida, Ms. Cranford-Gomez is the daughter of “mixed blood military brats,” and has lived in numerous places around the United States. She has a bachelor’s degree from Seton Hill College, a M. A. and post-graduate work from Michigan State University, and is at present planning to enter the doctoral program in English at the University of Oklahoma. Her poetry has appeared in Metamorphosis, PoetryMagazine.Com, The Pendulum, and Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry (To Topos: Poetry International), and a scholarly article, “Brackish Bayou Blood: Weaving Mixed Blood Indian Creole Identity Outside the Written Record,” was recently published in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal.