.
Governor
Owens Opens Up at Colorado Book
Awards
by
Judah Ken Freed
Rocky
Mountain Book Awards featured the state
literati promoting the power and value of
reading.
.
Governor
Bill Owens relaxed into animated
conversation about reading and books
October 2 at the annual Rocky Mountain
Book Awards, sponsored by the Colorado
Center for The Book, the state affiliate
for the Library of Congress.
Addressing an
audience of about 450 literati gathered in
the Seawell Ballroom at the Denver
Performing Arts Complex, the largest
turnout ever for the annual event, Owens
introduced novelist Pete Hamill, author of
Snow in August, which the governor
had chosen as his recommended state book
for 2002.
In making his
introduction, Owens said he chose the
novel about a boy coming to grips with
bigotry in New York City after WWII
because it's a "book of optimism" in the
wake of the 9/11 attacks. He added, "The
book offers universal values as it looks
at our choices when confronted by evil."
Owens was a bit
defensive in his remarks for not choosing
a book about Colorado or at least a book
by a Colorado author. This complaint was
voiced in a recent letter to the Governor
from the president and board of the
Colorado Authors League, the state's
oldest organization for professional
writers.
Hamill spoke about
the creative spirit in art and in life,
"First we imagine, and then we live," he
said. "Optimism from the heart needs to
overcome cynicism from the head. You have
to imagine your triumph before you can do
anything about it."
Turning briefly
toward the governor, seated on the
platform, Hamill noted, "We need politics
to support the arts so that we can become
more human."
Denver radio talk
show host Peter Boyles then joined Owens
and Hamill on the platform to talk about
books and field questions from the
audience. The trio bantered about being on
Boyles' radio show that
morning.
Boyles had
originally suggested to the governor the
idea of promoting literacy by selecting a
book to be read statewide.
Owens said his own
personal library contained more than a
thousand volumes, much of them nonfiction
works about Russia and Eastern Europe, but
he also talked about the joys of fiction.
"If you love books, you can never be
lonely," he said.
Responding to an
audience query about the impact of video
games and new media on reading, Owens
said, "If we don't fight back, we'll soon
have a generation of people who get all of
their information and entertainment from
computer and TV screens instead of the
written word."
Recipients of the
Colorado Book Awards receive $250 plus
statewide and national recognition. Here
are the eleven winners for books published
in 2001:
- Growing Up
True: Lessons from a Western
Boyhood by Craig Barnes, former
Colorado Congressman
(biography/memoir).
- Mythmakers of
the West: Shaping America's
Imagination by John Murray
(Colorado & the West).
- Fighting for
Your Marriage by Howard Markam,
Scott Stanley and Susan Blumberg
(advice).
- Encyclopedia
of American Indian Contributions to the
World by Emory Dean Keoke and Kay
Marie Porterfied
(anthology/collections).
- And the Dish
Ran Away with the Spoon by Janet
Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel
(children).
- Cloud: Wild
Stallion of the Rockies by Ginger
Kathrens (young adult).
- The Coldest
March: Scott's Fatal Antarctica
Expedition by Susan Solomon
(general nonfiction).
- The Good
Journey by Micaela Gilchrist
(fiction).
- Two O'Clock
Eastern Wartime by John Dunning
(mystery).
- Passage
by Connie Willis (science
fiction).
- Colcha by
Aaron Abeyta (poetry, also won American
Book Award for poetry).
Colorado Center for
the Book executive director Chris Citron
noted the number of nationally and
internationally respected writers based in
Colorado. She strongly encouraged more
state funding for literacy programs to
grow the next generation of authors and
readers.
NOTE: In April 2003,
Governor Owens wiped out all funding for
the Colorado Council for the Humanities,
which had funded writers and artists in
Colorado.
Orginally
published in The Colorado
Statesman
August 2002
(c) 2002-03 by Judah Ken Freed
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