Good news.

Western Writers of America just announced the results of the 2026 Spur Awards for literary works published in 2025.

“Leftovers,” from the collection Buckoffs and Broken Barriers: Rodeo Poems, was named a Spur Award Finalist for Best Western Poem. It is a lighthearted verse bemoaning the state of an old, broke-down rodeo cowboy long, long past his questionable prime, reminiscing about the past. It is not altogether autobiographical.

“Rawhide Robinson Faces Fear” was honored as a Spur Award Finalist for Best Western Short Fiction. The story appears in the collection Shiny Spurs and Gold Medallions, which features award-winning stories from the past (and a few more) by yours truly and fellow author Michael Norman. Now, Rawhide Robinson has truly earned his place in the book. (Rawhide Robinson is, by the way, winner of a Spur Award and twice a Spur Award Finalist as the subject of previous novels.)

Since 1953, Western Writers of America Spur Awards have honored writers “for distinguished writing about the American West. . . . Spur Awards have been one of the most prestigious awards in American literature.” In addition to the Spur winner, two Finalists are named in each category. I have been fortunate to have won four Spur Awards—two for short fiction, one for poetry, and one for a novel.

These two new Finalists bring the total to eight for that recognition, joining other Finalists for short fiction and poetry, as well as novels and a song (with stellar cowboy singer/songwriter Brenn Hill).

Sometimes you get lucky. I just got a little bit lucky again. Twice.

 

Interview in Route 7 Review.

Utah Tech University in St. George publishes Route 7 Review, a digital literary arts journal. The name comes from a short highway through red rock and sand deep in southwestern Utah. A while back, while in the neighborhood for a “Poet on the Patio” reading at the city’s fine bookstore, the Book Bungalow, Utah Tech professor Stephen Armstrong and I talked about cowboy poetry.

Dr. Armstrong managed to wrangle my wandering words into some semblance of sense and the interview is included in the latest is issue of Route 7 Review, under a title honoring my hometown: The Man from Goshen. The links will take you there.

At the Utah Arts Festival.

Every summer (pandemics permitting) some 70,000 people make their way to downtown Salt Lake City for the Utah Arts Festival. On display is art of every kind, from sculpture and painting to music and dance to film and photography and more.

There’s literary art as well, and that’s where I come in. Or go on, if you’d rather.

On Friday, June 24, at 4:00 p.m. I’ll be reading selections from my writings about the 1863 Massacre at Bear River, the bloodiest encounter between the US Army and Indians in the history of the American West. It’s a tragedy largely forgotten and ignored in our collective memory, and that needs to change.

Selections from song lyrics, poetry, short stories, a novel, as well as a nonfiction book and magazine article are on the agenda.

If you’re anywhere near Salt Lake City from June 23 through June 26, be sure to visit the Utah Arts Festival. I’ll be there, and watching for you.

My Favorite Book, Part 19.

It would be nigh on impossible for me, or any other voracious reader, to identify a lone, single, sole book as the one and only all-time favorite. There are simply too many wonderful reads, and, depending on time and place and emotional state and who knows how many other contributing factors, books can mean something different to a reader with each re-read.

But if you backed me into a corner, one book that would certainly clamor for the place at the top of the pile is The Meadow by James Galvin.

There are many, many reasons I admire The Meadow. And, for just as many reasons, it’s a difficult book to put your finger on.

It is, in part, a memoir of sorts, recounting aspects of the author’s experiences. It is part natural history, providing much detail about landscape and seasons and wildlife. Some of it is history, painting a picture of people and places over the course of 100 years. It is a biography, in a way, focusing on the life of one character in great detail, and telling the life stories of a number of other characters. It is fiction to some degree, as Galvin writes dialogue and puts words in people’s mouths that, while they may reflect truth, he could not have heard. The publisher categorizes The Meadow simply as “literature.”

As simply as I can put it, the book tells a century-long story of a mountain meadow and the surrounding countryside in the high country along the Wyoming and Colorado border south of Laramie. But—and this is one characteristic that I particularly like—it does not tell the story chronologically. Nor does it do so using the normal format of chapters.

Rather, the story is told in short bursts, with some entries (for lack of a better word) only a few sentences long, and with none occupying more than a few pages. Interspersed are extracts from the actual diaries of a couple of characters. I sometimes describe the book as a series of “snapshots”; vivid images captured to illuminate people and places and events.

Then, it as if the author took his stack of snapshots and tossed them into the air, gathered them up at random, and used that arrangement in the book. You will read a page about something that happened last week, turn the page and find yourself immersed in something that happened fifty years ago, turn another page to witness events of a decade ago, read on the next page something from a century ago, or perhaps last month, or some other time.

As you page through the images, a bigger picture forms, tying all the people and places into one, big, fascinating story.

Finally, James Galvin is a poet. Which means he uses language beautifully. It’s a pleasure to read, and a reminder that writing—real writing—is more than storytelling.

I can’t say how many times I have read The Meadow. A dozen, perhaps. Maybe twenty.

I think I’ll pull it off the shelf and read it again.

My Favorite Book, Part 18

A “biographical novel” is a tricky undertaking. The author must hold to the facts while, at the same time, delve into the deeper truths of the inner workings of the subject. Over-reliance on one or the other can tip the scales too much and render the work lopsided and useless as either history or literature.

Win Blevins strikes a perfect balance in Stone Song: A Novel of the Life of Crazy Horse. Extensive research into the history and culture of the Lakota is evident throughout the book, as is his plumbing the depths of the recorded facts about and passed-down memories of Crazy Horse. It all comes together in a striking and engaging portrait of a great man. His strengths and shortcomings play out in a life torn between his duty toward his people, and obedience to the spirit that guides him.

While the well-known events of Crazy Horse’s life are included, such as his leadership at the battle at the Little Bighorn and other fights, Blevins does not hang his story on the extravagant or waste the reader’s time rehashing history. Instead, he concentrates on how those incidents interplay with the more profound and mystical moments in the man’s life that, taken together, reveal his character.

In the end, we see Crazy Horse as a human being much like, and very different from, ourselves. And we come away reminded that, as Blevins renders it in the Lakota language, mitakuye oyasin—we are all related.

Goodnight Goes Riding at CowboyPoetry.com.

CowboyPoetry.com is, without doubt, the world’s biggest cowboy poetry gathering. There, you’ll find collected thousands of poems by hundreds of poets from yesteryear right up to today. On top of that, there are feature stories, essays, photos and art, news…you name it; it if has to do with cowboy poetry and the related ways of life, you’ll find it there.

A review of my new poetry book, Goodnight Goes Riding and Other Poems, was posted on the site recently and you can read it here: http://www.cowboypoetry.com/sincenews3.htm#rm.

As you visit CowboyPoetry.com, spend some time looking around and enjoy the wealth of information and entertainment you’ll find there. And it wouldn’t hurt to reach into your pocket and support the work of the Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry, which runs the site and does more—much more—for the arts and literature of the West.