Yearly since 1961, Western Writers of America has launched the Owen Wister Award to a distinguished specific individual for lifetime achievement throughout the self-discipline of Western historic previous. Earlier Wister Prize winners embody Academy Award-winning director John Ford and actor John Wayne, Pulitzer Prize-winning Kiowa poet and novelist N. Scott Momaday, historian Robert M. Utley, and bestselling authors resembling Elmer Kelton and Tony Hillerman. Named after the creator of the acclaimed 1902 novel The VirginianThe Wister is the WWA's highest award. The 2024 honoree is Quintard Taylor, a primary scholar on the historic previous of the black experience throughout the West.
Taylor is Professor Emeritus and the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American Historic previous on the School of Washington, Seattle In Search of the Racial Boundary: African Individuals throughout the American West: 1528–1990 (2024) and editor of the anthology African American Women Confront the West, 1600–2000 (2003). He was born in 1948 in Brownsville, Texas, the place his great-grandfather was born into slavery, his father ran a cotton plantation and his mother labored as a laborer. Taylor himself holds a grasp's and doctorate from the School of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In 2007, he based mostly BlackPast.org, an web black historic previous encyclopedia with 55 million prospects.
“Dr. “Taylor’s work shows the evolving and dynamic understanding of the black experience throughout the American West, a topic that has prolonged been uncared for,” said Max McCoy, authorities director of WWA. “As a pioneer in bringing this experience to a broader viewers, he is larger than deserving of this, our highest honor.”
The nonprofit WWA was based mostly throughout the early Nineteen Fifties to promote the literature of the American West. It has spherical 600 members worldwide, along with authors and editors of fiction, non-fiction, songs, poems and screenplays. WWA will honor Taylor and his totally different honorees at its annual meeting, June 19-22, 2024, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.