I Promise Not To Suffer
By Carol Brock
Colorado is home to a lot of creative people, and they’ve got a lot of stories to tell. Put the two together and you’ve got the finalists for the 2014 Colorado Book Award, which includes five Boulder County residents.
Homeless people with pets, pushing personal boundaries, poetry, human relationships and consciousness, and even frogs are the topics the county’s finalists expressed through literature and art.
Boulder’s Steve Jenkins co-illustrated The Mystery of Darwin’s Frog (how fun is that?), which is a finalist in the Children’s Literature category. Gail D. Storey (gotta love her last name!) is a Memoir finalist for penning I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, which already won the National Outdoor Book Award.
Lafayette’s BK Loren was tagged in the Creative Nonfiction section for Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food, while Leslie Irvine is up in the General Nonfiction division for My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and Their Animals. It’s nice to see poetry getting its due, too, with Lafayette’s Tim Z. Hernandez’s nomination in the Poetry category for Natural Takeover of Small Things.
All told, 47 books spanning 16 diverse categories have earned nominations. But you’ll have to wait until June 13 to see who wins, when the Colorado Humanities & Center for the Book announces winners during the 23rd Annual Colorado Book Awards ceremony at Aspen’s Hotel Jerome. For info or tickets, visit www.coloradohumanities.org. n