Three Four Corners area writers will know this Sunday if they were awarded top honors from the Colorado Book Awards, after the winners are announced at the 2015 awards ceremony in Aspen.
The Colorado Book Awards have been presented annually since 1991 to authors, editors, illustrators and photographers from around the state who represent the best in their categories during a given year.
In the Best Anthology category, Fort Lewis College professor Andrew Gulliford was nominated for his essay collection “Outdoors in the Southwest”; in the General Nonfiction category, Durango restaurateur Katrina Blair was nominated for her book “The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival”; and in the Mystery category, Cortez author Chuck Greaves was nominated for his novel “The Last Heir”.
Two of the authors made a stop Thursday to the Cortez Public Library as part of a three-stop book tour leading up to the awards ceremony.
“It’s wonderful to have such amazing talent in our small corner of the Southwest and to have this talent recognized by being nominated for the prestigious Colorado Book Award is remarkable,” said Kathy Berg, library assistant at the Cortez Public Library. “Win or lose; we are officially on the map in the literary world. These authors are the ultimate storytellers as they weave and wind their own stories about their writings, thoroughly engaging and entertaining audiences.”
Thursday’s book talk with the authors also gave attendees a taste of more programming the library will be offering this fall, Berg said.
“This event is the beginning of some of the adult programming that will be an integral part of the Cortez Library’s literary series that will be starting in October and continuing through early spring,” she said.