Awards

June 28, 2013—ForeWord Reviews’ 15th annual Book of the Year Awards (BOTYA), judged by a select group of librarians and booksellers from around the country, were announced this evening at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago. The winners exemplify the best work coming from today’s independent, university, and small press communities.

BOTYA 2012 Winners in Ecology & Environment (Adult Nonfiction)

1. Gold
   The Last Atoll
   by Pamela Frierson
   Trinity University Press
2. Silver
   Niagara Digressions
   by E.R. Baxter
   Starcherone Books
3. Bronze
   Damming the Osage
   by Leland Payton and Crystal Payton
   Lens & Pen Press

March 7, 2013— Pamela Frierson and Mark Panek have been named this year’s winners of the Elliott Cades Awards for Literature, the most prestigious literary awards in Hawai‘i.

The nonprofit Hawai‘i Literary Arts Council, which is charged with hosting the awards program, selected Frierson to be the recipient of the award for an established artist. Panek was named the winner of the award for an emerging artist.

Both writers will be presented with the awards and will read from their work at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival in Honolulu on May 18.  More information forthcoming at  www.hawaiibookandmusicfestival.org

Reviews

Environment Hawai`i Vital in-depth coverage on the Hawaiian environment

SEJournal (Society of Environmental Journalists) Summer 2013

As a kid in Hawai’i, author Pamela Frierson knew of only eight islands that comprised her home state.

Choice April 2013

Expertly balancing personal memoir with environmental, military, and other human histories, writer Frierson takes readers on a decade-long journey to a vast ecosystem of which many are unaware, examining several of the surrounding archipelagos of Hawai’i’s main eight islands. In her travels, she describes how these isolated islands have become the homes and refuges for several species of birds and wildlife that have seemingly been captured in time, living on islands listed as “elevation 6 feet, population 6,” for example. She blends her personal experiences of the present to the past histories of each island, atoll, and reef she visits, providing a journalistic approach to the in-depth research she conducted, making this work very accessible to general readers as well as practitioners. Though there is an index and author notes, the one main drawback is the lack of a full bibliography; the author includes only selected items, and there are no references or footnotes in the work itself, making research into a specific subject she describes somewhat difficult. However, The Last Atoll brings to light an important ecological matrix that has otherwise been hidden and isolated. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

–K. K. Goldbeck-DeBose, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Copyright 2013 American Library Association

Reprinted with permission from CHOICE