Book by Professors Laura and Jim Nicosia Wins Coveted CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2023

Drs. Laura and Jim Nicosia of the English Department have won two coveted awards by the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Their book, Notable Writers of the American West & the Native American Experience (Salem Press) has been named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title and a CHOICE Top 75 Community College Resource for 2023. The list of winning titles is quite selective: it contains approximately 10% of some 6,000 works reviewed in CHOICE each year. Editors base their selections on the reviewer’s evaluation of the work, the editor’s knowledge of the field, and the reviewer’s record.

Their book traces America’s storytelling history of the Western frontier (as it was redefined throughout our history) and the wealth of ancient Indigenous stories passed down in the oral tradition to offer an updated and more accurate vision of the American West. But there is more to this collection than that, for contemporary writers are part of the ongoing narrative of the American West, and this volume is a collection of essays about a wide range of these writers, thinkers, activists, and scholars. The authors in this collection are engaged in a glorious conversation about life, love, philosophy, literature, politics, civil rights, biases, and (in)justices. They are artists, social transformers, builders, thinkers, poets, playwrights, populists, elitists, products of their society and shapers of their cultures.

CHOICE “reaches 22,000 librarians and an estimated 13,000 higher education faculty in almost every undergraduate college and university library in the United States, along with many larger public libraries, and special and governmental libraries.” Consequently, its reach is large and the awards are significant for scholars and students.

This is the Nicosias’ 7th collection with Salem/Grey House Press.