Each year the Center for Great Plains Studies presents a prize for the previous year's best book on the Great Plains. The Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize carries a cash award of $10,000, generously supported by Jim and Cheryl Stubbendieck. Publishers or authors may make nominations; each publisher may submit up to five titles. Only first edition, full-length, nonfiction books copyrighted in 2023 are evaluated for this year's award, which is chosen by an independent committee.
Submission Guidelines
Mail to:
Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize
Center for Great Plains Studies
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1155 Q STREET
PO BOX 880214
LINCOLN NE 68588-0214
USA
Eligibility
1. General eligibility: Eligible works must be first edition full-length books of nonfiction devoted to topics of significance to the Great Plains (see map), whatever their disciplinary perspective. Case studies with wide-ranging implications for the region will be considered. Books must be written in English, published professionally, and assigned an ISBN.
2. Ineligible works: Plays, reprints, or volumes of poetry or fiction, books with spiral or loose-leaf binding, books sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies or authored by any Center employee or member of the judging panel will be ineligible.
3.Release dates: Only books with a 2023 copyright will be considered.
4. Deadline: Books must be submitted so they arrive at the Center no later than January 31, 2024. Publishers or authors may submit books as soon as they are published.
5. Nominations: Book nominations may be submitted only by publishers or authors.
6. Limits: No more than five (5) titles by one publisher may be submitted.
7. Eligibility disputes: The judges will decide any dispute over a book’s eligibility. Decisions made by the judges will be final.
Entry
1. Number of copies: Five (5) copies of each nominated book should be submitted. Books should be in final finished form. Cloth or paper editions are accepted.
2. Entry forms: No entry form or entry fee is required. Publisher or author must include a cover letter stating the book is to be considered for the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and provide contact information for both the publisher and the author. This can be done via email to cgps@unl.edu.
3. Submission address: All submissions should include a cover letter and contact information.
Benefits
1. The author of the winning title will receive a $10,000 cash prize and will be invited to present a lecture at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Travel expenses will be provided by the Center for Great Plains Studies.
2. Press releases and announcements about the winning title will be sent to selected newspapers, websites, periodicals, and social media.
3. The winning title, along with reviews, cover image, and publisher link, will be posted on the Center for Great Plains Studies’ website. An announcement of the winning title will appear in the Center’s scholarly journals.
2024 Winner
Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir
The winner of the 2024 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize is “Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir” (The Ohio State University Press, 2023) by Dr. Thomas C. Gannon. Gannon is an Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Associate Director of Ethnic Studies. This marks the first time the book prize has been awarded to a UNL faculty member and current Great Plains Fellow. Gannon, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, specializes in Native American literatures, critical/eco-theory, and the representations of birds and other non-human animals in discourse.
“Gannon’s book is billed as a mixed-blood memoir, but it deftly defies simple characterization. His is a true voice from the Great Plains, who has experienced both the thrilling beauty of the natural landscape and the quotidian ugliness of its inhabitants. Gannon writes from a liminal space, taking down literary genres, literary heroes, dominant historical narratives, racist place names, all with a wicked sense of humor, innovative structure, and engaging storytelling,” said Gabriel Bruguier (Yankton Sioux Tribe), a member of the book prize committee and Assistant Professor at University Libraries.
Other finalists: The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren and American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail by Sarah Keyes.
Great Plains Book Prize talk: Oct. 15, 2024, 5:30 p.m. at the Center for Great Plains Studies
Past Winners
2023: Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Douglas Sanderson (Amo Binashii)
Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation
Sniderman is a writer, lawyer, and Rhodes Scholar from Montreal who has written for the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s. He has also argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, served as the human rights policy advisor to the Canadian minister of foreign affairs, and worked for a judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Sanderson is the Prichard Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and has served as a senior policy advisor to Ontario’s attorney general and minister of Indigenous affairs. He is Swampy Cree, Beaver clan, of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Divided by a beautiful valley and 150 years of racism, the town of Rossburn and the Waywayseecappo Indian reserve have been neighbors nearly as long as Canada has been a country. Their story reflects much of what has gone wrong in relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also offers, in the end, an uncommon measure of hope. (Harper Collins, 2022)
2022: Alaina E. Roberts
I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land
Dr. Roberts is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. who studies the intersection of Black and Native American life from the Civil War to the modern day. She holds a Doctorate in History from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
She writes, teaches, and presents public talks about Black and Native history in the West, family history, slavery in the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Indian Nations), Native American enrollment politics, and Indigeneity in North America and across the globe.
2021: Leo Killsback
A Sacred People: Indigenous Governance, Traditional Leadership, and the Warriors of the Cheyenne Nation” and “A Sovereign People: Indigenous Nationhood, Traditional Law, and the Covenants of the Cheyenne Nation
Dr. Killsback won for the two-volume set (Texas Tech University Press, 2020). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Native American Studies at Montana State University who specializes in indigenous governance, traditional law, sovereignty, and treaty rights. Dr. Killsback grew up on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation and is devoted to the preservation and resurgence of Cheyenne language and culture. He sustains relationships within his nation by means of collaborative methodologies that neither exploit nor marginalize.
2020: Pekka Hämäläinen
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
Lakota America (Yale University Press) is a complete account of the Lakota Indians from the early 16th to the early 21st Century, including the history of the iconic figures of Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull. Dr. Hämäläinen is Rhodes Professor of American History at St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford. He specializes in indigenous, colonial, imperial, environmental, and borderlands history in North America. Before Oxford, he taught at Texas A&M University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His 2008 book, The Comanche Empire, received 12 book awards, including the 2008 Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and the Bancroft Prize.
2019: C.J. Janovy
No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas
Janovy, an arts reporter and editor for public radio in Kansas City, MO, tells the compelling story of LGBT Kansans as they realized they would have to fight to create equality in their state. Using extensive interviews and research, she shares the diverse voices and experiences of LGBT community members living on the Plains and working for social change. (University Press of Kansas)
2018: Ted Genoways
This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm
Genoways is a contributing editor at Mother Jones, The New Republic and Pacific Standard. His last book, "The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food," was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award for Writing and Literature. (W.W. Norton & Company)
2017: Dan Flores
American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains
Flores is a writer and historian who specializes in environmental and cultural history of the American West. Before his retirement, Flores held the A.B. Hammond Chair in Western History at the University of Montana
2016: Michel Hogue
Métis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People
Dr. Hogue is an Assistant Professor in History at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Publisher: University of Regina Press in Canada and University of North Carolina Press in the U.S.
2015: Elizabeth Fenn
Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People
Elizabeth Fenn, Professor of History, University of Colorado at Boulder (Hill & Wang)
2014: Bernard Flaman
Architecture of Saskatchewan: A Visual Journey, 1930-2011
Flaman is a conservation architect for Canada’s Public Works and Government Services. (University of Regina Press)
2013: William E. Farr
Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood Indian's Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Justice
Dr. Farr, Professor of History, Emeritus, University of Montana, senior fellow and founding director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West (University of Oklahoma Press)
2011: James N. Leiker and Ramon Powers
The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory
James N. Leiker, Associate Professor of History, Johnson County Community College; and Ramon Powers, Former Executive Director of the Kansas State Historical Society. (University of Oklahoma Press)
2010: William Y. Chalfant
Hancock's War: Conflict on the Southern Plains
Chalfant, Attorney, Hutchinson Kansas, foreword by Jerome A. Greene. Publisher: Arthur H. Clark
2009: Michael Forsberg
Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild
Michael Forsberg, Conservation Photographer, Lincoln, Nebraska with Dan O'Brien, David Wishart, and Ted Kooser. Publisher: University of Chicago Press
2008: Pekka Hämäläinen
The Comanche Empire
Dr. Hämäläinen is an Associate Professor of History, University of California at Santa Barbara. Publisher: Yale University Press
2007: Akim D. Reinhardt
Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded Knee
Dr. Reinhardt is an Associate Professor of History, Towson University, Towson, Maryland. Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
2006: Michael L. Tate
Indians and Emigrants: Encounters on the Overland Trails
Dr. Tate, is a Professor of History and Native American Studies, University of Nebraska at Omaha. Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
2005: Louis S. Warren
Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show
Louis S. Warren is the W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History, University of California, Davis. Publisher: Knopf
Note: 2012 is missing because of a change in titling Book Prizes. After 2012, awards were named for the year the award is given. Before 2012, awards were named for the year the book was published.