Winner of The Backwaters Prize for 1998, Kevin Griffith's Paradise Refunded is a manic tour through the myths we live by and die by.  Poet and Novelist Ron Koertge says "Kevin Griffith is not only playful, skillful, mordant, and smart, he's also on a first-name basis with Dante, Frankenstein, and Eve.  Paradise Refunded is pure pleasure from begining to end-- buoyant, nourishing, and just plain fun to read.

Paradise Refunded (The Backwaters Prize in Poetry)

Literature & Fiction

Griffith, Kevin

Poetry

THE BACKWATERS PRESS

Intense poetry about family life, told in a mature voice by a veteran poet of the Great Plains, Marjorie Saiser. Poet Judith Minty writes: "I am deeply moved by these extraordinary poems about giving birth and dying, about what it means to live life with dignity.  They grow out of the heart of America, out of the landscape of small town and prairie, out of the hearts of people who look you straight in the eye.  You dare not turn away, for the lessons to learn here are compelling.  Marjorie Saiser is not only a wise and compassionate writer-- her poems shine with details of the things of this earth, they pulse with the earth's very rhythms".

Bones of a Very Fine Hand

Saiser, Marjorie

Winner of the 1999 Backwaters Prize for a book-length manuscript of poetry. Greg Kuzma, Judge for this year's contest wrote "Five or six times I've encounterd voices such as hers-- that seem to me indispensible. All the virtues are here-- charity, compassion, honesty, tenderness, generosity of spirit. Each turns its facets flashing light as just the right moment. These are poems that will sustain us long into the next century.

Rescue (The Backwaters Prize in Poetry)

McNall, Sally Allen

The Weary Motel

Spencer, Mark

Literary

2001 Nebraska Book Award An enduring story of the return of a Viet Nam War expatriate to his hometown in Western Nebraska. He learns not only about himself, but about the bonds of friendship, family, and the land. A work of fiction that will take its place alongside the greats of Prairie literature.

Homefield: Sonata in Rural Voice

Richter, Robert

Genre Fiction

Winside, Nebraska rancher and Wayne State College English and Creative Writing teacher J.V.Brummel's new book of poems, Cheyenne Line is a poetry hat trick: not a word out of place, no baloney, no solipsistic search for self or meaning or some undefined thing in academia we find in so much poetry these days. Brummels' throws are true: the cuts, clips, and brands each poem distinctly as a J.V. Brummels poem. Nobody's going to get these poems mixed up in the herd. Cheyenne Line and other poems is a powerful achievement by this gifted writer in mid-career.

Cheyenne Line and Other Poems

Brummels, J.V.

Winner of The Backwaters Prize for 2000, an annual contest through The Backwaters Press.

The Gifts and Thefts (The Backwaters Prize in Poetry)

Staudt, David

2002 Nebraska Book Award Widely-known Nebraska poet Marge Saiser's unique poems deal with love and loss through a lifetime of careful reckoning.

Lost in Seward County

Winner of the Omaha Prize for Novel for the year 2000, selected by Mark Spencer. A modern comic-romance with a generous dollop of Southern Gothic, Resurrecting Virgil will keep readers turning the pages long into the night.

Resurrecting Virgil

LaRue, Dorie

2004 Nebraska Book Award Edited by Shelly Clark and Marjorie Saiser, Road Trip is a collection of conversational interviews with Nebraska poets and writers including United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and Nebraska State Poet William Kloefkorn, as well as Don Welch, Brent Spencer, Jonis Agee, Barbara Schmitz, Charles Fort, Hilda Raz, Ron Block, Eammon Wall, Twyla Hansen, and J.V. Brummels. Each interview includes a picture of the author and representative selections from their work.

Road Trip: Conversations with Writers

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Books by THE BACKWATERS PRESS