Nisbet, Egan earn Northwest booksellers awards
Jack Nisbet and Timothy Egan have won 2010 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards.
Spokane’s Nisbet won for “The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest” (Sasquatch Books), his excellent account of early naturalist David Douglas and his travels through our region. This book has been a bona fide regional hit since its release last fall.
Spokane-raised Egan (now a Seattle resident) won for his most recent best-selling history, “The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). It chronicles the devastating 1910 forest fires in Idaho, Washington and Montana.
The awards, among the most prestigious in the region, are judged by a committee of nine booksellers from throughout the Northwest.
The other winners are: “Boneshaker” by Cherie Priest, “The Crying Tree” by Naseem Rakha and “All in a Day” by Cynthia Rylant and illustrator Nikki McClure.
Nisbet in Newport
Speaking of Jack Nisbet, he’ll be giving a presentation on Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Create Arts Center, 900 W. 4th St. in Newport, Wash.
This class is offered through the Sense of Place program sponsored by WSU/Pend Oreille County Extension and the Kalispel Tribe Natural Resources Department.
Registration is $5, or you can bring a nonperishable food bank donation for free admission.
Two skate-related events
Two book events this week have skating themes:
• Author and national figure skating authority Joanne Jamrosz will be signing her book, “Skating Forward” (Comfort Publishing) on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave.
The book tells the stories of 16 figure skaters who fight the odds to pursue the sport they love. Jamrosz is a contributing writer with U.S. Figure Skating.
• Ron Judd, author of “The Winter Olympics: An Insider’s Guide to the Legends, the Lore and the Games” (The Mountaineers Books, $18.95) will do a slideshow presentation and book signing on Friday, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Kress Gallery at River Park Square.
The book is about all of the Winter Olympics sports, but in his presentation he will concentrate on figure skating. Judd is an outdoors columnist for the Seattle Times.
A worthy ‘Unworthy’
Coeur d’Alene’s Kimberly Wohlert’s self-published book, “Unworthy,” is on sale at the Coeur d’Alene Hastings and through Amazon – and does she ever have an astonishing story to tell.
At age 12, Wohlert witnessed her mother shoot her stepfather with a deer rifle and bury him in their Boise backyard. Thirty years later, Wohlert told her story to the police. Her mother is now serving a prison sentence for second-degree murder.
“Unworthy” is Wohlert’s own telling of this story. You might see another version of the story on TV soon: “Dateline NBC” interviewed her recently and will air an episode sometime this year.
Idaho poetry prize
The Lost Horse Press in Sandpoint is accepting submissions for the Idaho Prize for Poetry 2010, a national competition which includes $1,000 and publication of a manuscript.
No, you don’t have to be from Idaho to win it. The 2009 winner, Stephen Gibson, is from Florida.
For details on how to enter, go to www.losthorsepress.org or call (208) 255-4410.
Walter and Ligon
Spokane authors Jess Walter (“Financial Lives of the Poets”) and Sam Ligon (“Drift and Swerve”) will read at the Lost Horse Press’ “A Mid-Winter’s Afternoon Reading,” Saturday, 3 p.m. in the lobby of the Sandpoint Library.
Admission is free and the public is invited.
Multi-author event
The Spokane Borders, 9980 N. Newport Highway, has a multiple-author event planned on Saturday between noon and 5 p.m.
A lineup of 15 local authors, including Patrick F. McManus (“The Double Jack Murders”), Melissa Moore (“Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter”) and Jane Fritz (“Legendary Lake Pend Oreille”), will be signing their books.
The store also plans to have live local musicians in the café during the event.
Other authors include Deby Fredericks, Deanna Davis, Sharon Cramer, Dawn Nelson, Robert Pillsbury, Vern Hopkins, Merle Martin, John Heffernan, Bob Manion, Jean Flanigen, Frank Zafiro, Frank Scalise, James Parry and Paul Cohn.
McManus will be there from noon to 2 p.m., Moore from 12:30 to 2 p.m. and Fritz from 2 to 5 p.m. Most of the other authors will be there for the entire afternoon.