(TUCSON, Ariz.) – A favorite for readers who stay up late devouring the best of Southwest-themed books, the Library’s 43rd annual Southwest Books of the Year is now available! You can find your copy at libraries statewide and more than a dozen local and regional stores, including Antigone Books, Clues Unlimited, and all three Bookmans.
This year’s selections range widely from memoir and biography to history, poetry, and art and photography. As always, it also features some great books for kids.
Here are just a handful of great reads selected by our panelists of voracious consumers of Southwest literature:
- Michael Powell’s Canyon Dreams, the moving story of a Navajo high school basketball team
- Steel on Stone, Nathaniel Farrell Brodie’s gripping account of working on a National Park Service trail crew in the Grand Canyon.
- Erosion, a fierce and timely collection of essays from beloved writer and conservationist, Terry Tempest Williams.
See all of the Top Picks and Panelists Picks here
Selected titles came from more than 25 publishers nationwide from New York to Arizona, including HarperCollins and Tucson’s very own University of Arizona Press.
Our gratitude goes out to the amazing Southwest Books of the Year selection committee:
- Ann Dickinson, retired Pima County Public Library librarian
- Bruce Dinges, retired Director of Publications at the Arizona Historical Society
- Vicki Ann Duraine, Programming Librarian for Apache Junction Public Library
- Gregory McNamee, writer, editor, and photographer
- Margie Trujillo-Farmer, Literary Arts Librarian at Pima County Public Library, and Southwest Books of the Year project coordinator
- Christine Wald-Hopkins, a longtime book critic for national, local, and regional newspapers.
- Helene Woodhams, retired Pima County Public Library librarian who has been affiliated with Southwest Books of the Year since 2006.
Southwest Books of the Year is made possible by a gift from the Friends of the Pima County Public Library and by the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records, a division of the Secretary of State, with federal funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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