Two UNM Press authors were honored at the Zia Award Luncheon recently as part of the New Mexico Press Women’s Association annual conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Las Cruces author Paula Moore won the 2009 Zia Award for her account of the Cricket Coogler case, Cricket in the Web: The 1949 Unsolved Murder that Unraveled Politics in New Mexico.
Moore’s book revisits a longtime mystery of the southern New Mexico desert for a fascinating account of true crime, political intrigue and a girl too young to die.
Arguably 20th-century New Mexico’s best-known unsolved case and a source of fascination for more than 50 years with its elements of rough sex, politics and payoffs, and unforgettable characters that some people are still afraid to talk about, Cricket in the Web takes readers into the wild, sometimes lawless atmosphere of 1949 New Mexico.
Moore, a native of eastern New Mexico, is the former executive assistant to the president of New Mexico State University. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in several literary journals, and her first book, One Man’s Word, won the 1989 New Mexico State University Book Award. She holds a master’s degree in English from NMSU and her MFA from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. Since 1974, she and her husband have lived in Doña Ana County in southern New Mexico.
Mary Beath of Albuquerque, NM, received the first ever Zia Chair Award for her book, Hiking Alone: Trails Out Trails Home.
In Hiking Alone, Beath, an award-winning poet, offers a collection of personal essays that explore the tensions between the myths of the Old West, the realities of the New West, and the complexities of a natural world that includes humans. Whether on a solo hike in the San Juan Mountains weighing the risk and choice in unexpected encounters, diving in the Sea of Cortez hoping to make peace with traditional biology, or lobbying for wilderness on Capitol Hill, Beath addresses the natural world not only as a resident and activist, but from a personal level of self-exploration that claims a deeper involvement of mind with nature.
Beath’s book, Refuge of Whirling Light (UNM Press), received the 2006 Wrangler Award for Poetry from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and was a finalist for both the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West and a Spur Award from Western Writers of America. Beath is also an award-winning artist and naturalist.
This is the third year in a row that a UNM Press title or distributed title has won the Zia Award. In 2007, The King’s Lizard by Pamela Christie won the award for fiction and The Voyage of the Beetle by Anne Weaver received the award for children’s literature in 2008.
New Mexico Press Women, an affiliate of the National Federation of Press Women, is an organization of professional journalists and communicators that promotes the highest ethical standards while looking to the future in professional development, networking and protecting First Amendment rights.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu