HoustonChronicle.com
Section: Arts & Entertainment
Section: Books Etc.
Institute of Letters applauds San Antonian, Dallas novelist
San Antonio writer Robert Flynn won the Lon Tinkle Award for career excellence, and Dallas novelist C.W. Smith won the top fiction prize at the annual meeting of the Texas Institute of Letters on Saturday in Austin.Among Flynn's best-known books are North to Yesterday (1967), a comic trail-driving novel, and The Last Klick (1994), a grimly realistic novel of the Vietnam War. He is also the author of short-story collections.
Smith won the Jesse H. Jones Award for his 1998 novel Understanding Women (Texas Christian University Press), a coming-of-age story set in mid-'50s Texas.
Houston-born poet B.H. Fairchild won the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award for his collection The Art of the Lathe (alicejamesbooks). Fairchild lives in Claremont, Calif.
Here are the other awards announced at the meeting:
Susan Choi of Brooklyn, N.Y., won the Steven Turner Award for best first work of fiction for The Foreign Student (Harper Flamingo).
The Carr P. Collins Award for best book of nonfiction went to William C. Davis of Mechanicsburg, Pa., for Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis (HarperCollins).
Friends of the Dallas Public Library Award for the book making the most significant contribution to knowledge was presented to Don Carleton of Austin for A Breed So Rare: The Life of J.R. Parten, Liberal Texas Oil Man, 1896-1992 (Texas State Historical Association).
The Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for best book of translation was shared by Marian Schwartz of Austin for a translation of Nina Berberova's The Ladies From St. Petersburg: Three Novellas (New Directions Press) and James Hoggard for a translation of Raul Mesa's Poems From Cuba: Alone Against the Sea (York Press).
Jane Roberts Wood of Dallas won the Brazos Bookstore Award for best short story for My Mother Had a Maid (Southwest Review).
Rick Bass of Troy, Mont., won the O.Henry Award for best work of magazine journalism for Into the Fire (Men's Journal).
The Stanley Walker Award for best work of journalism was shared by Patrick Beach of Austin for The Struggle for the Soul of Kreuz Market (Austin American-Statesman) and Bryan Woolley of Dallas for A Legend Runs Through It (Dallas Morning News).
Pat Mora of Edgewood, Ky., won the Book Publishers of Texas Award for best children's book for The Big Sky (Scholastic Press).
The following new members were welcomed into the organization: B.H. Fairchild; John T. Irwin; Jerry Bradley; Max Crawford; Neal Barrett Jr.; James Sanderson; James Hannah; John Bloom, writing as Joe Bob Briggs; Bill C. Malone; and Kay Cattarulla.