WWA to honor novelist Estleman with Owen Wister Award

ENCAMPMENT, Wyo., May 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Loren D. Estleman, the prolific novelist of Westerns and mysteries, will be honored by Western Writers of America as the 2012 recipient of the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to the literature of the West.

Estleman has won Spur Awards from WWA for his novels "The Undertaker's Wife," "Journey of the Dead" and "Aces & Eights," and short stories "The Bandit" and "The Alchemist." He also has picked up Western Heritage Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City for "Journey of the Dead," "The Master Executioner" and a short story, "Iron Dollar."

"I'm a lucky, lucky man," Estleman said from his home in Whitmore Lake, Mich. "I've had the privilege of congratulating many of the wonderful writers who have received this honor, and to count some of them among my closest friends. Now I get to stand where they did. How lucky can you get?"

Past winners of the Owen Wister Award, previously called the Levi Strauss Saddleman Award, include N. Scott Momaday, Elmore Leonard, Dorothy M. Johnson, Eve Ball and Jack Schaefer.

"I never fail to be amazed at Loren Estleman's award-winning ability to write so well in two distinct categories of fiction, Western and mystery," said Dusty Richards, incoming president of Western Writers of America.

Western Writers of America was founded in the 1950s to preserve, honor and promote literature about the American West. Estleman will be honored at the nonprofit organization's annual convention, June 12-16 in Albuquerque, N.M.

"Paperback Westerns were my summer reading program when I was 14," said Estleman, who has also been honored with four Shamus Awards from Private Eye Writers of America and an Edgar Award nomination from Mystery Writers of America. "My American Literature class had stuffed me to the eyebrows with Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Hannah Green and Walt Whitman, and the best remedy for all those subjunctives and blocks of stream-of-consciousness was a good old-fashioned gunfight."

For information on Western Writers of America, write Executive Director, Western Writers of America, 271 CR 219, Encampment, WY 82325, or log on to www.westernwriters.org.

SOURCE Western Writers of America