Winners announced for Oklahoma Book Awards

An autobiography by a first-time AfricanAmerican author from Stillwater won the top prize in the young adult category Saturday at the 2016 Oklahoma Book Awards.

Written by Alton Carter, “The Boy Who Carried Bricks” recounts the story of his rough childhood in a straight-forward style that both inspires and enlightens.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Oklahoma Center for the Book, the 27th annual awards banquet was held at the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame and Jim Thorpe Museum in Oklahoma City.

Master of ceremonies for the evening was Waynoka author Sheldon Russell, whose novel, “Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush,” won the fiction prize in 2007.

Of the seven books that received the top awards in their categories for 2016, four were written or created by an author, book designer or photographer currently living in Oklahoma. This year, 120 books written in the previous year by Oklahomans or about Oklahoma were submitted to the competition.

“The Boy Who Carried Bricks” tells the story of a young man who, despite being abandoned by this father, neglected by his mother and shuttled between foster homes and a boys ranch, refuses to succumb to the fate that the world says should be his.

“This is living proof that anything is possible,” said Carter, who thanked God and his publisher, family, friends and church for their support.

Carter is now the director of youth ministries for the First United Methodist Church of Stillwater. He and his wife Kristin have two sons.

In addition to the literary awards, the Oklahoma Center for the Book presented the 2016 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award to the award-winning Cherokee author, poet and playwright Diane Glancy, and the Ralph Ellison Award to the late H. Wayne Morgan of Norman, who is widely considered the leading authority and pioneer of the study of the history of the Gilded Age.

The Gibson award, which is named for Norman historian Arrell Gibson, who served as the first president of the Oklahoma Center for the Book, recognizes a writer for a body of work contributing to Oklahoma’s literary heritage.

Glancy, 75, is an emeritus professor of English and creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., and a prolific, award-winning poet, playwright and novelist. From 1980 to 1986, while earning a master’s degree in English in 1983 from the University of Central Oklahoma, Glancy served as an artist-in-residence for the Oklahoma Arts Council.

“The beginning of my writing is in Oklahoma,” Glancy, who now splits her time living in Kansas and Texas, said before the awards ceremony. “The land of Oklahoma informed my work. I carry the stories of the land with me.”

Proficient in numerous genres — fiction, nonfiction, poetry and playwriting — Glancy often creates work that reflects her American Indian heritage. To date, Glancy has produced more than 60 novels, prose works, poetry collections and plays, as well as dozens of stories and essays and had her work included in numerous anthologies.

Glancy also has been an Oklahoma Book Award finalist three times, in the fiction, poetry and non-fiction categories. She won the Oklahoma Book Award in 2003 for her novel, “The Mask Maker,” which was inspired by her stint teaching poetry to Native American students in Oklahoma for the state Arts Council.

Other notable novels include “Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears, “(1996); “Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea,” (2003); and “Flutie,” (1998), which was made into an independent film titled, “The Dome of Heaven.”

The late author/historian H. Wayne Morgan, a longtime educator and administrator at the University of Oklahoma, was named the recipient of the Ellison Award, which was created to posthumously honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to Oklahoma’s literary heritage.

James Hart, the Hudson Professor and chairman of the University of Oklahoma History Department, said Morgan “had a genuine affinity for American cultural history.”

“He was simply one of the most important people in my life,” Hart said about his mentor. “Wayne was throughout his career a prolific scholar. His output was extraordinary ... . ”

According to an obituary published after Morgan’s death at age 79 in 2014, when Morgan received his doctorate from UCLA in 1960, most professional historians thought the so-called Gilded Age — roughly, the years from the late-19th through the early-20th century — offered little to interest serious scholars, and “a kind of dead-zone” existed between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. “Into that void stepped Morgan,” the obituary added.

Morgan taught at San Jose State University in California and the University of Texas at Austin, before joining OU’s history department in 1972. His 27-year career at OU included a six-year stint as the department chairman.

Morgan, who was known for his popular and entertaining lectures, was revered for the individual attention he gave students, as well as colleagues, in achieving their academic goals.

He also was a voracious reader and prolific writer with dozens of books and professional articles to his

The land of Oklahoma informed my work. I carry the stories of the land with me.”

DIANE GLANCY

credit. Among his most notable books were “William McKinley and His America,” “From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896” and “Drugs in America: A Social History, 1800-1980.”

With his wife, Anne, he co-authored “Oklahoma, a History,” commissioned as part of a series on the states and the nation in celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution. Morgan also was editor in chief of “Newcomers to a New Land,” a series of 10 volumes on ethnic groups in Oklahoma, published by OU Press.

Morgan retired from OU in 1999 as George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus.

Also honored during the evening was Gini Moore Campbell, who received the Glenda Carlile Distinguished Service Award, named for a past executive director of the Oklahoma Center for the Book.

Campbell, of Oklahoma City, received the award for both her service to the center and her contributions to Oklahoma’s literary heritage. She has served on the board of the Friends of the Oklahoma Center for the Book for more than a decade, including four years as president, during which time she initiated a sponsorship program for the annual book awards banquet.

In her post at Oklahoma Heritage Association Publishing, Campbell has edited more than 400 titles on Oklahoma’s history and heritage, and has written dozens of articles on the state and its people.