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FW: Shaara Press Release
Slotkin wins Shaara Award for Civil War fiction
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 1, 2001
BATON ROUGE -- The 2000 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil
War Fiction will be presented July 16 in Atlanta to Richard Slotkin, author
of Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln (Henry Holt & Co.). The 12 p.m.
ceremony will take place at the Georgia State Archives.
The $1,000 annual award is funded by novelist Jeff Shaara and created
by Shaara and the U.S. Civil War Center, a department of the Louisiana
State University Libraries Special Collections.
Slotkin will read from his winning novel, and a reception and book
signing, featuring both the winner and Jeff Shaara, will follow the
ceremony. The presentation is free and open to the public.
Olin Professor of American Studies at Wesleyan University, Slotkin
teaches interdisciplinary courses on American culture, linking literature,
film and history. He recently completed the last volume of an award-winning
nonfiction trilogy on the American Myth of the Frontier. He has published
two other historical novels: The Crater (Atheneum, 1980), a novel of the
Civil War; and The Return of Henry Starr (Atheneum, 1988), about the end of
the Old West and the beginning of the Western.
Jeff Shaara's father, Michael Shaara, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975
for the Civil War novel, The Killer Angels, on which the movie Gettysburg
was based. Historians and novelists frequently point to The Killer Angels
as the book that inspired them to write about the Civil War.
Jeff Shaara serves on the U.S. Civil War Center's National Advisory
Board. He is the author of the Civil War novels Gods and Generals, and The
Last Full Measure. His most recent novels are Gone for Soldiers set in the
Mexican War, and Rise to Rebellion on the American Revolution.
The mission of the U.S. Civil War Center is to promote the study of
the Civil War from unique perspectives. This purpose is reflected in the
criteria for the Michael Shaara Award. Each year the award ceremony is held
in a different location to underscore the national focus of the Center. The
1999 award was presented at the New York State Archives to Robert J.
Mrazek, author of the novel Stonewall's Gold.
The Georgia Department of Archives and History seeks to identify,
select, preserve and make accessible records that constitute Georgia's
recorded history. Through exhibitions and special programs, the Archives
promotes examination of historical topics of interest to Georgians,
including the Civil War. "We are honored to host the presentation of this
year's Michael Shaara Award," said David W. Carmicheal, director of the
Georgia Department of Archives and History. "Encouraging the examination
of history from different perspectives deepens our understanding of events
and the people who shaped them."
"The United States Civil War Center is proud to partner with the
Georgia Department of Archives and History for this year's Michael Shaara
Award," said Leah Wood Jewett, director of the U. S. Civil War Center. "In
so many cases it is fiction that first inspires us to seek out our history.
By presenting a fiction award at the Archives, we are able to highlight the
relationships among literature, history and public memory."
For additional information, contact Leah Wood Jewett, director, U.S.
Civil War Center, (225) 578-3151 or by email at lwood@lsu.edu.
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