Late South Dakota Poet Laureate Joins Owen Wister Award Recipient Joseph M. Marshall III, an Oglala/Sicangu Lakota writer, as 2023 Inductees
CENTRAL, UT, UNITED STATES, May 2, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — Charles Badger Clark, counted among the elite of cowboy and Western poets from the “classic era” of the art, will be inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame on June 23 during the Western Writers of America convention in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Clark (1883-1957), a poet laureate of South Dakota who remains influential today, joins Joseph M. Marshall III, an Oglala/Sicangu Lakota writer of nonfiction and fiction, as WWA’s 2023 Hall of Fame inductees. Marshall is the 2023 Owen Wister Award honoree for lifetime contributions to Western Literature.
Since 2015, the Owen Wister Award recipient has been automatically inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, housed outside the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. One writer who has been dead for at least five years is also inducted.
Three qualifying nominees for Hall of Fame induction are chosen by the board of directors of the Homestead Foundation, a charitable 501(c)(3) foundation that provides award giving and educational functions for WWA. WWA members then vote for one candidate. The Owen Wister recipient is chosen by the Homestead Foundation board. Membership in WWA is not required.
Clark’s poetry is still recited and sung at cowboy gatherings. “A Border Affair” is among his popular works, and he also wrote “A Cowboy’s Prayer,” “Ridin’,” “The Old Cow Man,” “The Legend of Boastful Bill,” “Song of the Leather,” “From Town” and “A Bad Half Hour.”
Sun and Saddle Leather (1919) is probably Clark’s most popular book. Other titles include Grass-Grown Tales, Spike, When Hot Springs Was a Pup, God of the Open and Sky Lines and Wood Smoke.
Marshall was born in 1945 and grew up on South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation. His first language is Lakota. He is the author of The Long Knives are Crying, a novel about the Battle of the Little Big Horn that was a 2009 Spur Award finalist for Best Western Long Novel. His novel Hundred in the Hand (2007) told the story of the 1866 Fetterman battle.
Marshall’s nonfiction titles include The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History and The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn: A Lakota History, a 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award winner. Many of his books are about Lakota beliefs, customs and spirituality.
Spur Awards, for works whose inspiration, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West, will also be presented to winners and finalists during the convention, scheduled for June 21-24 at the Holiday Inn Rapid City Downtown-Convention Center.
Western Writers of America (WesternWriters.org) was founded in the 1950s to promote and honor Western literature. The organization’s 700-plus members worldwide write about the American West. Members are published authors of fiction, nonfiction, songs, poems and screenplays, along with agents, editors and publicists.
Next year’s WWA convention is scheduled for June 19-22 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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Johnny D. Boggs
Western Writers of America
+1 505-920-4113
[email protected]
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