О премии

«Шпора» - литературная премия, ежегодно присуждаемая «Западными писателями Америки» (WWA). Одна из самых престижных наград в американской литературе.

Цель премии - почтить писателей за выдающиеся работы об американском Западе.

Премия вручается с 1953 года, в том же году была основана WWA. Чтобы получить награду, автору не обязательно быть членом WWA.

Первое время премия присуждалась в пяти номинациях. Со временем список номинаций расширился, некоторые номинации были переименованы.
Каждый год не обязательно вручение премии в каждой номинации.

Кроме «Шпоры» «Западные писатели Америки» с 1961 года присуждают еще одну награду - Премию Оуэна Уистера за выдающиеся достижения в западной литературе.
картинка jump-jump

Имена лауреатов премии, как правило, объявляются весной. Вручение премии проходит в торжественной обстановке в июне, на конгрессе «Западных писателей Америки» (WWA) в разных городах США.

Жанры: Зарубежная литература, Современная зарубежная литература Страны: США Язык: Английский Первое вручение: 1953 г. Последнее вручение: 2023 г. Официальный сайт: http://westernwriters.org/spur-awards/

Номинации

Лучший западный роман
Spur Award for Best Western Novel

Премия вручалась с 1953 по 2013 год.

Лучший роман Запада
Spur Award for Best Novel of the West

Премия вручается с 1988 года.

Лучший современный западный роман
Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel

Премия вручается с 1993 года.

Лучший западный исторический роман
Spur Award for Best Western Historical Novel

Премия вручается с 1953 года.

Лучший традиционный роман
Spur Award for Best Western Traditional Novel

Премия вручается с 2014 года.

Лучший роман для несовершеннолетних
Spur Award for Best Western Juvenile Fiction

Премия вручается с 1953 года.

Лучший первый роман
Spur Award for Best First Novel

Премия вручается с 1969 года.

Лучшая западная научно-популярная историческая литература
Spur Award for Best Western Historical Nonfiction

Премия вручается с 1954 года.

Лучшая современная западная научно-популярная литература
Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Nonfiction

Премия вручается с 2018 года.

Лучшая западная биография
Spur Award for Best Western Biography

Премия вручается с 1994 года.

Лучшая западная научно-популярная литература для детей
Spur Award for Best Western Juvenile Nonfiction

Премия вручается с 1959 года.

Лучшая первая научно-популярная книга
Spur Award for Best First Nonfiction Book

Премия вручается с 2015 года.

Лучший западный рассказчик (Иллюстрированная детская книга)
Spur Award for Best Western Storyteller (Illustrated Children's Book)

Премия вручается с 1995 года.

Лучшая западная краткая проза
Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction

Премия вручалась с 1953 по 2012 год.

Лучшая западная краткая документальная проза
Spur Award for Best Western Short Nonfiction

Премия вручается с 1969 года.

Лучшая западная поэзия
Spur Award for Best Western Poem

Премия вручается с 2001 года.

Лучший западный драматический сценарий
Spur Award for Best Western Drama Script

Премия вручается с 1972 года.

Лучший массовый роман в мягкой обложке
Best Western Mass Market Paperback Novel

Премия вручается с 1979 года.

Лучший западный любовный роман
Best Western Romance Novel

Премия вручается с 2018 года.

Лучший рецензент
Spur Award for Reviewer

Премия вручается с 1953 года.

Специальная награда
Special Award

Вручается с 1977 года.

Премия носителя медицинской трубки
Medicine Pipe Bearer Award

Премия вручалась с 1979 по 2003 год.

Лучшая аудиокнига
Spur Award for Best Western Audiobook

Премия вручалась с 2007 по 2013 год.

Лучшая документальная литература
Spur Award for Best Western Nonfiction

Премия вручалась с 1954 по 1992 год. С 1993 года номинация разделилась на несколько номинаций: историческая, современная, краткая, дебютная и детская научно-популярная литература.

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22 июня 2023 г. — победители

Лучший западный роман
Proving Her Claim: On the Dakota Frontier
C.K. Van Dam 0.0
The Civil War created countless spinsters and widows. Anna Olson was one of them.

With no prospects for marriage and family, Anna pins her future on the frontier and heads west to stake a claim on the wide-open prairies.

“Most women go from their father’s house to their husband’s house,” Anna said. “Here, I have my own house. I am my own person.”

But the Dakota Plains are not empty.

Anna’s new life collides with a Lakota warrior. Two Hawks MacKenzie, the son of a Scots fur trapper and a Lakota woman, takes an unusual interest in his new neighbor. In turn, Anna begins to the see the land through the eyes of the Lakota people.

Together, they forge a bond that could connect their two worlds – despite prejudice and intolerance they encounter.

Romance, adventure and history – a trifecta!
If you liked the television series 1883 and Yellowstone , you’ll love Proving Her Claim, the debut novel from author CK Van Dam.

CK Van Dam a daughter of the Dakota prairies. With degrees in History and Journalism, she has embarked on a second career to create stories about the strong women who have built our nation and our world.

Will Anna successfully claim a piece of the new western lands? Will Anna and Two Hawks be able to blend their two worlds? Pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page and immerse yourself in the Dakota Frontier.
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Лучший современный западный роман
Beasts of the Earth
James Wade 0.0
James Wade, whose first two novels were praised as rhapsodic and haunting, delivers his most powerful work to date--a chilling parable about the impossible demands of hate and love, trauma and goodness, vividly set in the landscapes of Texas and Louisiana.

Beasts of the Earth tells the story of Harlen LeBlanc, a dependable if quiet employee of the Carter Hills High School's grounds department, whose carefully maintained routine is overthrown by an act of violence. As the town searches for answers, LeBlanc strikes out on his own to exonerate a friend, while drawing the eyes of the law to himself and fending off unwelcome voices that call for a sterner form of justice.

Twenty years earlier, young Michael Fischer dreads the return of his father from prison. He spends his days stealing from trap lines in the Louisiana bayou to feed his fanatically religious mother and his cherished younger sister, Doreen. When his father eventually returns, an evil arrives in Michael's life that sends him running from everything he has ever known. He is rescued by a dying poet and his lover, who extract from him a promise: to be a good man, whatever that may require.

Beasts of the Earth deftly intertwines these stories, exploring themes of time, fate, and free will, to produce a revelatory conclusion that is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
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Лучший западный исторический роман
Properties of Thirst
Марианна Уиггинс 0.0
Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a novel destined to be an American classic: a sweeping masterwork set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American Dream.

Rockwell "Rocky" Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death.
As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy.
Rocky is determined to protect his remaining family and the land where they've loved and lost so much. But when the government decides to build a Japanese-American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he's battled for years. Complicating matters is the fact that the idealistic Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.
Properties of Thirst is a novel that is both universal and intimate. It is the story of a changing American landscape and an examination of one of the darkest periods in this country's past, told through the stories of the individual loves and losses that weave together to form the fabric of our shared history. Ultimately, it is an unflinching distillation of our nation's essence--and a celebration of the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.
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Лучший традиционный роман
The Secret in the Wall
Энн Паркер 0.0
Sometimes the past just won't stay buried

San Francisco music store owner Inez Stannert agrees to provide financial assistance to boardinghouse proprietor Moira Krause. When the common wall of the abandoned house adjoining Moira's is breached to expand her business, the corpse of a murdered man tumbles out, along with a worn canvas bag holding a fortune in gold coins.

Then the locksmith who made the house's unbreakable locks is brutally slain, and the keys vanish. Inez and private detective Wolter Roeland de Bruijn set out to uncover the truth behind the killings..
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Лучший роман для несовершеннолетних
Wish Upon a Crawdad
Curtis W. Condon 0.0
Wish Upon a Crawdad takes place in rural America during the waning years of the Great Depression. Times are still lean, but there are glimmers of hope—especially for resourceful kids, like Ruby Mae Ryan.

Ruby isn't your typical, depression-era twelve-year-old. For one thing, she's got a jar full of coins, thanks to her crawdad business and other odd jobs. But she doesn't let the money go to her head. She's too busy trying to make more. That's because she's got something special in mind, and time is running out. So, Ruby calls on crawdads for help.

A lot of people wish on the first star at night. Ruby does that, too, but she also wishes on the first crawdad of the day. She figures the odds are better. "Not many folks wish upon a crawdad," Ruby says. To convince doubters of their magic, Ruby points to a wish coming true as the story unfolds. Electricity: she's never had it--no one in the valley has--until she wished upon a crawdad.

But now, Ruby has another wish. She wants something so badly she won't even say what it is out loud, afraid that might jinx the wish. Instead, Ruby calls it her "secret surprise." The only other people who know about it are Daddy and her best friend, Virginia. And they'll never tell. Or will they?

Wish Upon a Crawdad is all about friendship and adversity, courage and fear, heartbreak and triumph, and it has as many channels and curves as the creek running through it. Along the way, Ruby searches for a legendary place called Crawdad Haven, kisses a pig, "dances" with an angry dog, escapes death, and even has a chance encounter with a famous dignitary. Not bad for a twelve-year-old, crawdad-catching girl from farm country.

Historical note: The story unfolds during a pivotal time in America. The Great Depression is not yet a memory, and the country is only eighteen months from another world war. Ninety percent of villages and farms don’t have electricity. But that’s begun to change, thanks to rural residents banding together to form their own power companies called rural electric cooperatives. Such is the backdrop for the story, which takes place in 1940 in a valley near the fictional village of Crossroads, Oregon. It’s a fitting name, given rural America—and the entire country—are at the brink of a new age.
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Лучший первый роман
Proving Her Claim: On the Dakota Frontier
C.K. Van Dam 0.0
The Civil War created countless spinsters and widows. Anna Olson was one of them.

With no prospects for marriage and family, Anna pins her future on the frontier and heads west to stake a claim on the wide-open prairies.

“Most women go from their father’s house to their husband’s house,” Anna said. “Here, I have my own house. I am my own person.”

But the Dakota Plains are not empty.

Anna’s new life collides with a Lakota warrior. Two Hawks MacKenzie, the son of a Scots fur trapper and a Lakota woman, takes an unusual interest in his new neighbor. In turn, Anna begins to the see the land through the eyes of the Lakota people.

Together, they forge a bond that could connect their two worlds – despite prejudice and intolerance they encounter.

Romance, adventure and history – a trifecta!
If you liked the television series 1883 and Yellowstone , you’ll love Proving Her Claim, the debut novel from author CK Van Dam.

CK Van Dam a daughter of the Dakota prairies. With degrees in History and Journalism, she has embarked on a second career to create stories about the strong women who have built our nation and our world.

Will Anna successfully claim a piece of the new western lands? Will Anna and Two Hawks be able to blend their two worlds? Pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page and immerse yourself in the Dakota Frontier.
Купить эту книгу
Лучшая западная научно-популярна...
Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
Megan Kate Nelson 0.0
From historian and critically acclaimed author of The Three-Cornered War comes the propulsive and vividly told story of how Yellowstone became the world’s first national park amid the nationwide turmoil and racial violence of the Reconstruction era.

Each year nearly four million people visit Yellowstone National Park—one of the most popular of all national parks—but few know the fascinating and complex historical context in which it was established. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferdinand Hayden led a team of scientists through a narrow canyon into Yellowstone Basin, entering one of the last unmapped places in the country. The survey’s discoveries led to the passage of the Yellowstone Act in 1872, which created the first national park in the world.

Now, author Megan Kate Nelson examines the larger context of this American moment, illuminating Hayden’s survey as a national project meant to give Americans a sense of achievement and unity in the wake of a destructive civil war. Saving Yellowstone follows Hayden and two other protagonists in pursuit of their own agendas: Sitting Bull, a Lakota leader who asserted his peoples’ claim to their homelands, and financier Jay Cooke, who wanted to secure his national reputation by building the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Northwest. Hayden, Cooke, and Sitting Bull staked their claims to Yellowstone at a critical moment in Reconstruction, when the Grant Administration and the 42nd Congress were testing the reach and the purpose of federal power across the nation.

A narrative of adventure and exploration, Saving Yellowstone is also a story of Indigenous resistance, the expansive reach of railroad, photographic, and publishing technologies, and the struggles of Black southerners to bring racial terrorists to justice. It reveals how the early 1870s were a turning point in the nation’s history, as white Americans ultimately abandoned the the higher ideal of equality for all people, creating a much more fragile and divided United States.
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Лучшая современная западная науч...
A Place of Thin Veil: Life and Death in Gallup, NM
Bob Rosebrough 0.0
Gallup, New Mexico, is a place like no other. It is disproportionally and simultaneously wonderful and terrible. It is a place of constant struggle, where the forces of good and evil collide. The former frontier mining town, bordering the Navajo Nation at the far western edge of New Mexico, is one of those few places on earth that have the power to change the course of our lives and transform us deeply.

With its rugged, violent history and otherworldly landscape, Gallup has ignited the imaginations of famous Americans from John Wayne to Bob Dylan. Tony Hillerman’s novels put Navajo culture and Gallup on the map. For the Navajo people for whom the region has been home for millennia, the town and its alcohol-fueled economy has a more sinister pull.

As an outsider who became an insider, Bob Rosebrough shares the historical realities of this enigmatic town, and gives readers a rare and true insight into Gallup’s iconic stories and long-hidden secrets.

This book isn’t just for Gallupians. It is a memoir about regular people going up against Goliath issues, and it’s for anyone interested in spiritual conflict; Navajo people, history, and culture; political maneuvering; true crime; alcohol abuse awareness; taking on city hall; working with city hall; and rooting for the underdogs in a dog-eat-dog world. And it is the long overdue story of the death of a Navajo warrior named Larry Wayne Casuse.
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Лучшая западная биография
Before Billy the Kid
Melody Groves 0.0
Many stories have been written about the exploits of Billy the Kid, the charismatic outlaw of the Old West. Some have been pure fiction, designed to entertain and excite. Purple prose writers began chronicling the exploits of Billy as early as the late 1870s. Others have been biographical, researched by historians or recorded by those who knew him, including his murderer, Sheriff Pat Garrett. But there was once a different side to the famous gunfighter, a softer more artistic side that seems at odds with Billy’s reputation for shooting, killing, and robbing. Born Henry McCarty, he was also known by the names Henry Antrim, Kid Antrim, and William H. Bonney. He didn’t shoot twenty-one men, as has been claimed. Four is a more likely number, three in self-defense. In Before Billy the Kid, author Melody Groves explores the early life of the infamous outlaw, the teenage boy who loved to sing and dance. The young man who was polite, educated, and popular. A boy who had the bad luck to be orphaned at fifteen and left with no one to guide him through life. How different history might have been if Billy had pursued his love of music instead of a life of crime.
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Лучшая западная научно-популярна...
American Ace: Joe Foss, Fighter Pilot
Hector Curriel 0.0
From the time he was four years old, Joseph Jacob “Joe” Foss (1915–2003) found flight fascinating. As an adolescent, he followed the career of flyer Charles Lindbergh and could hardly wait to get into the air himself. In college, he took private flying lessons, and as war broke out across Europe in 1939 and 1940, he joined the South Dakota National Guard, preparing himself for combat by earning more flight time on weekends. After graduation, he joined the United States Marines Corps’ flight training program. Finally, in 1942, Joe was ready to be a fighter pilot, just as he had always dreamed of being. But he was now twenty-six years old, and the military deemed him too old for combat. Instead, the Marine Corps assigned Joe to teach men eighteen to twenty-three years old how to fly. Joe accepted his role but also volunteered for special assignments. He became an aerial reconnaissance photographer, hoping the job might lead him to the battle front. He pestered his superiors until he was allowed to take combat training in the Grumman F4F Wildcat, the carrier-based dogfighter of the Pacific theater. Still, he found himself stateside rather than at the front. He continued to volunteer for dangerous assignments, and his determination eventually won him a spot in a fighting unit just as the war in the Pacific heated up. Joining the Marine Corps’ VMF-121 fighter squadron as executive officer, Capt. Joe Foss and his unit shipped out to Guadalcanal, code-named “Cactus,” in the Solomon Islands. They arrived in early October 1942, just weeks after the Allies had taken Henderson Field on Guadalcanal from the Japanese. By mid-October, Joe had shot down five enemy airplanes, which officially made him a flying ace. With his leadership and his pilots’ daredevil tactics, the VMF-121 became known as Foss’s Flying Circus, the heart of the Cactus Air Force. Shooting down a total of twenty-six enemy planes between October 10, 1942, and January 25, 1943, Foss became America’s Number One Ace and earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in Guadalcanal. He was a hero known around the world for his prowess in the skies. Using pen and ink, Hector Curriel draws readers into his subject’s triumphs and trials as Joe Foss overcomes difficult and dangerous situations. He is shot down twice, contracts malaria, and loses his friends and comrades in battle. American Ace places action at the forefront, using the escapades of Foss during World War II to showcase the experience of many fighter pilots, while highlighting the perseverance that made this man unique.
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Лучшая первая научно-популярная ...
American Hero, Kansas Heritage: Frederick Funston's Early Years, 1865-1890
Clyde W. Toland 0.0
U. S. Army Major General Frederick Funston (1865-1917) held the highest filled rank at his death, which was nationally mourned, including by President Woodrow Wilson. This is volume one of Becoming Frederick Funston Trilogy and explores Funston's formative years in late 19th century rural Kansas. It is an examination of the world in which he matured. This world has been recreated in detail, including farming, schools and church, prairie fires, crime including lynchings, family and friends, and even the visit in 1879 of President Rutherford B. Hayes. Endorsements include one by General David Petraeus, U.S. Army (Ret). The balance of the trilogy includes Funston's exploration of Death Valley, Alaska, and the British Northwest Territory (volume two) and fighting with the revolutionary forces in Cuba against Spain in 1896-1897 (volume three). These two volumes will be released later this year.
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Лучший западный рассказчик (Иллю...
The Rowdy Randy Wild West Show
Casey Rislov 0.0
Rugged action. Daring stunts. Spectacular showmanship!

Rowdy Randy is back, and this time instead of aggravating all the creatures in her path, she’s rounding them up to put on her very own Wild West Show. Now critters from every rock, den, and tree are lining up to audition. And what a show it is! From rope stunts to high jumps, and aerial tricks to climbing competitions, this cowgirl’s show has got it all. But there is one unwanted character lurking in the shadows who is ready to take credit for it all.
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Лучшая западная краткая проза
No Quarter
Kathleen O’Neal Gear 0.0
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Лучшая западная краткая документ...
Texas Jack Takes an Encore
Matthew Ross Kerns 0.0
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Лучший массовый роман в мягкой о...
Dead Man's Trail
Nate Morgan 0.0
The first in a bold, new, gun-blazing Western series introducing Carson Stone. He may be reformed, but he’s still a wanted man. Unless he can track down the biggest, baddest outlaw on the Dead Man’s Trail!

Reformed outlaw Carson Stone, in this razor-sharp Western, stakes his claim in the untamed, bloody Idaho Territory, only to find himself trapped in a bullet-riddled nightmare he may not walk away from . . .

Former thief and wanted man Carson Stone dreams of a peaceful life on a ranch built by his own hands, but dreams don’t always come without a steep price. To earn a stake, Carson rides west to collect the reward on a claim-jumper. The land is beautiful, but times are hard as the territory is ravaged by the latest Indian war and a mining boom gone bust.

When Stone steps in to defend a family ambushed by murdering marauders, he makes a terrifying discovery: one of the hired killers carries a death list full of names and dollar amounts. But the names on this list belong to upstanding citizens, not criminals. When the local sheriff is gunned down in broad daylight, Carson takes on the one job he never wanted—pinning on a lawman’s tin star to protect the innocent.

A gang of ruthless killers are storming back to finish their work—and Carson Stone has just moved to the top of the death list.
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