Two UNM Press books were honored in the 2016 WILLA Literary Awards from Women Writing the West (WWW). Report to the Department of the Interior: Poems by Diane Glancy won the 2016 WILLA Literary Award in Poetry. Amada’s Blessings from the Peyote Gardens of South Texas by Stacy B. Schaefer was honored as a finalist in the scholarly nonfiction category.
Presented annually by WWW, the annual awards recognize the best published literature for women’s or girls’ stories set in the American West. Winning books are selected by professional librarians, historians, and university affiliated educators. Award winners will be recognized during the 22nd Annual WWW Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Oct. 13–16. WWW is a non-profit association of writers and other literature oriented professionals, writing and promoting the Women’s West.
Constructed as a series of reports to the Department of the Interior, Glancy’s poetry collection focuses on the oppressive educational system adopted by Indian boarding schools and the struggle Native Americans experienced to retain and honor traditional ways of life and culture. Glancy is the author of more than 25 books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. A professor emerita at Macalester College, she served as a visiting professor of English at Azusa Pacific University from 2012 to 2014.
Amada’s Blessings from the Peyote Gardens of South Texas reveals the life of Amada Cardenas, a Mexican American woman from the borderlands of South Texas who played a pivotal role in the little-known history of the peyote trade. Schaefer’s book weaves together the geography, biology, history, cultures, and religions that created the unique life of Cardenas and the people she knew.
Professor Emerita of anthropology at California State University, Chico (CSUC) and former codirector of the Valene L. Smith Museum of Anthropology (CSUC), Schaefer has worked in research, curatorial, and educational capacities at a number of California museums. Her most recent book is Huichol Women, Weavers, and Shamans (UNM Press). Currently her research includes ethnographic fieldwork among the indigenous peoples of Chile and Bolivia.