Western Writers Hall of Fame Induction in Lubbock, Texas June 26
Win Blevins, this year’s Owen Wister Award honoree, joins a class of several distinguished writers who will become the first living writers to enter the Western Writers Hall of Fame.
Last year, the Homestead Foundation board of directors, which oversees the Western Writers Hall of Fame, voted to induct the Owen Wister Award recipient into the Hall of Fame, housed at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.
Blevins is best known for his mountain man classic “Give Your Heart to the Hawks” and his novel of Crazy Horse, “Stone Song,” for which he won a Spur Award. His newest book is “The Darkness Rolling,” which he co-wrote with his wife Meredith Blevins.
Among the other inductees to the Hall of Fame this year are Judy Alter, Matt Braun, James A. Crutchfield, David Dary, Max Evans, Andrew J. Fenady, John Jakes, Leon C. Metz, N. Scott Momaday, Robert M. Utley, Dale L. Walker, Richard S. Wheeler and Jeanne Williams, all writers who have previously been recognized by WWA with either a Saddleman Award or a Wister Award (both given for lifetime achievement).
Also included in this year’s list of inductees are non-writers such as John Wayne, John Ford and Clint Eastwood.
Recently deceased Wister honorees not already in the Hall of Fame including Robert J. Conley, Fred Grove, Tony Hillerman, Elmer Kelton, Norman Zollinger, Jory Sherman, and David Lavender, will be posthumously inducted along with Edward Abbey who was voted into the Hall of Fame by the membership of Western Writers of America.
Other writers being recognized this year are S. Omar Barker, Bill Gulick, Dee Brown, Alvin Josephy Jr., Benjamin Capps, José Cisneros, Tom Lea, Elmore Leonard, Nelson Nye, Gordon Shirreffs and Don Worcester.
The induction ceremony will take place at the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas, on June 26.
Among the other writers who already hold a place in the Hall of fame are Andy Adams, Eve Ball, B. M. Bower, Willa Cather, Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), Peggy Simpson Curry, Bernard Devoto, J. Frank Dobie, Frederick Glidden (Luke Short), Helen Hunt Jackson, Wallace Stegner, John Steinbeck, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
