2009 Colorado Book Awards

Colorado Book Award Winners Announced at Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival

ASPEN-Fourteen talented members of Colorado’s literary community were honored as recipients of Colorado Book Awards at the Doerr-Hosier Center in Aspen, Colorado on Monday, June 22. About 150 guests gathered for the event.

“The awards and event celebrate individuals who are exceptionally gifted in their chosen craft,” says Josephine Jones, Colorado Humanities Director of Programs and Center for the Book. “They also provide an opportunity for readers and book creators to meet face-to-face on an occasion that honors the place of books, and the people who create them, in our lives.”

Brief readings by the winners of each competition category provided a venture into the work in the author’s own voice. Audience members later attended a book signing reception for the CBA winners and finalists, giving them a rare chance for conversation with the world’s literary best.

“The event is a way for the community to say ‘thank you’ to the honorees for enriching our lives with their insight, humor, and artistry,” says Jones. Based on the feedback from the honorees and guests, the 2009 event will go down in the record books as an incredible
success.

The Colorado Book Awards are presented annually by Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book to recognize outstanding contributions by Colorado authors, editors, illustrators, and photographers in 12 book categories: biography, children’s literature, creative nonfiction, fiction/literary, general nonfiction, genre fiction, health and well-being, history, juvenile, literature, pictorial, poetry, and young adult.

For more information contact Josephine Jones at jones@coloradohumanities.org or 303 894 7951 x 15.

Please click here to download a list of the 2009 Colorado Book Award Winners

High Plains Chautauqua Presents 20th Century Characters

Greeley, Colorado-High Plains Chautauqua (HPC) announces an exciting line-up for “The American Spirit: An Endless Quest,” its 10th annual living history festival August 4-8, 2009. Presenters will portray Theodore Roosevelt (Aug. 4), Georgia O’Keeffe and Albert Einstein (Aug. 5), Ernest Hemingway and General Douglas MacArthur (Aug. 6), Branch Rickey and César Chávez (Aug. 7), and Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Aug. 8) under the Chautauqua tent on Aims Community College campus each evening.

This year's festival is the culmination of a three-year series focusing on the American identity, from colonial times through the 20th century. High Plains Chautauqua's unique blend of theatre, history and the humanities will feature portrayals of Americans who embody the spirit of 20th century America. This was a time when the United States achieved international prominence in science, commerce, politics, and the arts, and a period marked by our on-going struggle to fulfill ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Each evening will begin with different musical entertainment, ranging from Matt Pack
and Heart Strings to the Kream of the Krop swing band and ragtime dance by Watch
Your Step.

Daytime lectures, workshops, dramatizations and children's activities with Kids’
Chautauqua, and performances by Young Chautauquans take place at Aims, in downtown
Greeley, and at other venues throughout the area during this five-day period. All events
are free. High Plains Chautauqua is a program of Colorado Humanities.

For more information visit www.coloradohumanities.org or call the Greeley Convention
and Visitors Bureau at 970-352-3567.