WESTERN WRITERS 2012 MEETING

Here are some photos of our Western Writers of America meeting in Albuquerque June 12-16, 2012.

Here we are dressed for the Spur Banquet. Nancy wanted me to wear my new black onyx bolo with my black suit, shirt and hat.

We asked Cheryl and Leon Metz to take our photo and I reciprocated with this one.

At our table at the business breakfast we had a new member from Japan. Duke Hiroi on the right is an expert on guns and was with his mentor, Western novelist Charles Whipple, who lives in Japan.

Also at our table at the business meeting were new friends, Ollie Reed who was a newspaper writer until the paper closed in 2008. He writes stories with Johnny Boggs for True West and specializes in non-fiction. At the table they were discussing Billy the Kid. Ollie had interviewed persons who knew him and swear they saw him dead in Fort Sumpter. Next to Ollie is Francine Roark Robison, who writes cowboy poetry and is from Tecumseh, OK. I lived in Prague for three years near there. The person on the right is Thomas Cobb, novelist from Foster, RI.

We were honored to have Eli Paul at our table also. We met him on the bus from Santa Fe. He told us he hasn't written any books for seven years. He wrote about the American Indians in Nebraska. He is a librarian in Kansas City but for WWA he has one of the hardest jobs. He was the Spur Chair. He had to get judges for all of the categories, pick the winners and finalists and chaired the presentation program at the Spur Banquet that is the most important part of the program as well as the Finalist luncheon the day before. He recruited Wes Studi, the actor who played Geronimo, as well as other Indian roles in movies, to present many of the Spur awards. All of the women had to have their photo made with him.