Nominate a Book for the 2025 Book Award
CSAW will announce its call for submissions for the 2025 CSAW Award for Outstanding Western Book in January of 2026. This juried prize recognizes a book that demonstrates excellent scholarly or creative insight concerning the American West or some aspect of its history, culture, society, or environment. Of particular interest are books that are geographically relevant to the Southern Plains region and/or the concerns of a Southern Plains regional readership; that balance scholarly/creative excellence with accessible style or popular appeal; and, books that are in keeping with CSAW’s general mission in that they balance a localized focus with global perspective and significance.
The prize includes a monetary award of $1000, along with a plaque. Prize winners will be encouraged to travel to WT to deliver a lecture based upon the award-winning book.
The deadline to submit a book for consideration is generally aroundMarch 1, 2026. Books with a publication year of 2024 are eligible for consideration. Books from any discipline, genre, or publisher are eligible. Books may only be nominated by the publisher or the author of the work.
Please continue to watch this space for the announcement of the call for submissions, at which point a google form will be found in this space. Finalists will be required to provide 5 copies of the book for the award committee.
If you have any questions or inquiries, please contact Wade Shaffer at wshaffer@wtamu.edu
Previous Winners:
- 2024: Tracy Daugherty for Larry McMurtry: A Life (St. Martin's Press, 2023)
- 2023: Anne F. Hyde for Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022).
- 2022: Lucas Bessire for Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (Princeton University Press, 2021).
- 2021: Justin Gage, We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020).
- 2020: Josh Garrett-Davis, What is a Western? Region, Genre, Imagination (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019). View a recording of this reception and lecture under " past events." Runner-up for the award is Douglas Sheflin’s Legacies of Dust: Land Use and Labor on the Colorado Plains (University of Nebraska Press, 2019).
- 2019: James E Sherow, The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy’s Great Gamble (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018).R unner-up for the award is Monica Muñoz-Martinez’s The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, 2018).
