Willa Awards

Submitted by admin on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 3:28pm

The Willa Awards are given annually by Women Writing the West. They are awarded in several categories, including Contemporary Fiction and Historical Fiction, for outstanding literature featuring women's stories.

Contemporary Fiction

	2009 Jana Richman. The Last Cowgirl Dickie Sinfield returns to her Utah hometown for her brother's funeral where she must face her strained relationship with her family and her own life in a journey of self-discovery.
	2008 Janet Peery. What the Thunder Said
	2007 K.L. Cook. The Girl from Charnelle It's 1960 in the Panhandle town of Charnelle, Texas — a year and a half since sixteen-year-old Laura Tate's mother boarded a bus and mysteriously disappeared. Assuming responsibility for the Tate household, Laura cares for her father and three brothers and outwardly maintains a sense of calm. But her balance is upset and the repercussions of her family's struggles are revealed when a chance encounter with a married man leads Laura into a complicated relationship for which she is unprepared. As Kennedy battles Nixon for the White House, Laura must navigate complex emotional terrain and choose whether she, too, will flee Charnelle. --Publisher comments (William Morrow & Company)
	2006 Laura Pritchett. Sky Bridge Libby is a bagger at the supermarket in town. She is also a new mother - not of her own child, but of her little sister's. Tess did not want the baby, but Libby convinced her not to have an abortion by promising to raise it - a promise Tess thought was crazy and Libby believed she would not have to keep. Now Tess has left for Durango and Libby pays rent to share a house with her mother on land neither of them own. She drives into town a few days a week to work at the supermarket - where everyone thinks she's heroic - and sometimes sees her boyfriend, Derek, but for the most part is alone with Amber, the baby. A steady flow of Libby's dreams and worries about Tess wash over the baby like warm bath water.
	2005 Mary Sharratt. The Real Minerva: A Novel Minerva, Minnesota, in 1923 is the picture of Willa Cather-like gentility: the Northern Pacific Railway runs through a town center dominated by church steeples and the Hamilton Creamery and Pop Factory. But Minerva is also a small town of limited opportunity, a place where the status quo is firmly entrenched and rigidly enforced. Against this tableau of midwestern placidity and calm, three Minerva women assert their dignity and independence against all odds.
	2004 Ruth Ozeki. All Over Creation A dramatic story of a prodigal daughter's homecoming to a heartland of genetically modified crops.
	2003 Debra Magpie Earling. Perma Red Louise White Elk dreams of both belonging and escape, and of discovering love and freedom on her own terms. "Perma Red" is a love-crossed saga about a young woman coming of age under perilous circumstances, and about the consequences of her often contradictory desires.
	2002 Paul Scott Malone. This House of Women This House of Women opens in the small East Texas town of Karankawa. The year is 1942, and the United States has just entered World War II. Pregnant and alone, nineteen-year-old Hannah Hayward arrives in Karankawa in search of a better life. In a richly layered novel that is both historical and genealogical, This House of Women follows Hannah and her family across the decades: through the post-war plenty of the 1950s, the perils of Vietnam, and the Texas oil boom and crisis of the 1980s.
	2001 Margaret Coel. The Spirit Woman When Vicky Holden and Father John O'Malley look into the disappearance of a history professor who was visiting the Wind River Reservation, they are led into a twenty-year-old mystery involving the disappearance of another historian, and then even further into the past-as they unravel a controversy surrounding the young Shoshone woman named Sacajawea...
	2000 Annie Proulx. Close Range A collection of stories set in Wyoming. They range from The Mud Below, on an itinerant rodeo cowboy, to People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water, which is on a family feud.
	1999 Pam Houston. Waltzing the Cat A collection of interrelated stories on a woman who is lucky in adventure, but unlucky in love. Lucy O'Rourke risks her life in a variety of dangerous sports and emerges a winner, but in love she always falls for the wrong man.

Historical Fiction

	2009 Fern J. Hill. Charley’s Choice: The Life and Times of Charley Parkhurst
	2008 Rilla Askew. Harpsong Harlan Singer, a harmonica-playing troubadour, shows up in the Thompson family's yard one morning. He steals their hearts with his music, and their daughter with his charm. Soon he and his fourteen-year-old bride, Sharon, are on the road, two more hobos of the Great Depression, hitchhiking and hopping freights across the Great Plains in search of an old man and the settlement of Harlan's long-standing debt.
	2007 Elizabeth Crook.The Night Journal Meg Mabry has spent her life with her back turned to her legendary family legacy. When an unexpected discovery casts doubt on the history recorded by her great-grandmother, Meg succumbs to the allure of the family stories in order to unlock an old mystery. --Publisher Comments (Viking Books)
	2006 Sandra Dallas. New Mercies Natchez, Mississippi, in 1933 is a place suspended in time. The silver and china are still dented and cracked from Yankee invaders. And the houses have names...and memories. Nora Bondurant is running away - from her husband's death, from his secrets, and from the ghosts that dog her every step. When she receives a telegram informing her that she has an inheritance, Nora suddenly has somewhere to run to: a house named Avoca in Natchez, Mississippi. Before, she knew little about her father's people. Now she's learning that the lure of Natchez runs deep, and that, along with Avoca, she's inherited a mystery. Nora's aunt, Amalia Bondurant, was killed in a murder/suicide, and the locals are saying nothing more - except in hushed, honeyed tones.
	2005 Jane Candia Coleman. Tombstone Travesty: Allie Earp Remembers
	2004 Ann Parker. Silver Lies As 1879 draws to a close, this Rocky Mountain boomtown has infected the world with silver fever. It's not much different than the dot.com mania or the corporate scams that heat up over a century later. Unfortunately for Joe Rose, a precious-metals assayer, death stakes its own claim. Joe's body is found trampled into the muck behind Inez Stannert's saloon
	2003 Paulette Jiles. Enemy Women The Colleys are farmers in the Missouri Ozarks. Although Southerners, the family tries to remain neutral, a fact ignored by the Union militia who confiscate their livestock and arrest their daughter, Adair, on charges of "enemy collaboration." Yet as Adair soon discovers, fate can be a double-edged sword.
	2002 Micaela Gilchrist. The Good Journey The Good Journey is the sweeping and enthralling story of two extraordinary people, set against a West that was still to be won. It is at once a love story, the intimate portrait of a marriage and a fascinating recreation of the Black Hawk wars, the long, bloody clash between one of the great Native American leaders and his principal opponent, a tough, resourceful and determined American general with deeply conflicted feelings on the subject of Indians.
	2001 JoAnn Levy. For California Gold
	2000 Isabel Allende. Daughter of Fortune A Chilean woman searches for her lover in the goldfields of 1840s California. Arriving as a stowaway, Eliza finances her search with various jobs, including playing the piano in a brothel.
	1999 JoAnn Levy. Daughter of Joy: A Novel of Gold Rush California In San Francisco during the Gold Rush, a Chinese prostitute scores a first by using the law to defend her profession. Ah Toy takes to court a Chinese pimp invading her turf, wins and becomes legal representative for the city's Oriental call girls. The protagonist is based on a real-life person.