Evans Biography Award Winners to be Honored

The authors of this year’s Evans Award-winning books — a scholarly biography of Mormon pioneer Jacob Hamblin and a deeply personal account of agrarian heritage and the meaning of home — will be honored at a reception and book signing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, in the Haight Alumni House at Utah State University.

The public is invited to attend.

Award winners were announced earlier this year by Patricia Lambert, director of Utah State University’s Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, and the prestigious Evans Awards carry cash prizes of $10,000 for the Evans Biography Award and $2,500 for the Evans Handcart Award.

Winning authors for works published in 2013 are Todd M. Compton for his biographic work A Frontier Life: Jacob Hamblin Explorer and Indian Missionary and Evelyn I. Funda for her autobiographic meditation Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament.

“This year’s winners continue a long tradition of excellence in biographical writing about the people of ‘Mormon Country,’ said Lambert. “It’s always a difficult decision for our jury, because the stories of individuals and families described in these works are wide-ranging and compelling; in the end it comes down to which volumes represent the finest writing in this genre of American literature.”

Submissions for the Evans Biography Award must focus on individuals who spent a significant part of his or her life in the Interior West, also known as ‘Mormon Country’ — the region historically influenced by Mormon institutions and social practices. Neither the biography’s subject nor author need belong to the Mormon faith. Award winners are chosen from biographic works published in the previous year.

Todd Compton, a graduate of Brigham Young University, holds a Ph.D. in classics from UCLA. Specializing in Mormon history and the classics, Compton’s previous works include In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith and Fire and Sword: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri (coauthored with Leland H. Gentry).

With “A Frontier Life” Compton brings serious scholarship to the well-known Mormon pioneer Jacob Hamblin. While previous Hamblin biographies have explored aspects of the life of this Mormon convert, “frontiersman, colonizer, missionary to the Indians and explorer of the American West,” it is the meticulous use of primary sources that uniquely distinguishes Compton’s portrayal.

Emerging author Evelyn Funda was awarded this year’s Evans Handcart Award for her volume Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament.

In her western family saga, the Utah State University associate professor of American literature recounts her family history and the inexorable forces and fortunes that tie them to their Idaho farmland.

Wild grasses and flowers are the metaphors that link the family to the land and to each other through time.

Initiated in 1983, the Evans Awards were endowed by the family of David Woolley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans. Both David and Beatrice Evans were born in 1894. David was an editor, writer and eventual owner of one of the largest advertising and public relations firms in the western United States. Beatrice was an historian and family genealogist. Both awards named in their honor celebrate the couple’s legacy of writing and biography.

A national jury of scholars each year selects the Evans Biography Award winner while a regional jury selects the Evans Handcart winner. This year, 24 titles were submitted to the Evans Awards.

For more information contact Barbara Warnes at Barbara.warnes@usu.edu.

USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Writer: Writer: Kristin Middaugh, CHaSS communications director, (435) 797-0267, kristin.middaugh@usu.edu

Contact: Barbara Warnes, (435) 797-0299, Barbara.warnes@usu.edu