HILLERMAN PRIZE

Wordharvest Writers Workshops and Thomas Dunne Books announced today that Christine Barber's novel THE REPLACEMENT CHILD has won the first Tony Hillerman Prize, awarded annually to the best unpublished mystery set in the Southwest written by a first-time author.

The announcement was made at the fifth annual Tony Hillerman Writers Conference: Focus on Mystery held in Albuquerque, New Mexico this past weekend, and THE REPLACEMENT CHILD will be published by Thomas Dunne/SMP in the fall of 2008.

Thanks once again to Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind for this information. Tony Hillerman is the only crime writer that my wife will read. She was so keen to see the Navajo Territory that despite her great dislike of flying I was able to get her on an 11 hour flight to Phoenix.

Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are one of the great detective combinations in crime fiction, and the mixing in of Navajo customs with the stark beauty of the South West makes every book a real treat.

I shall be most interested to read the prize winner next year.

We Navajo understand Coyote is always waiting out there, just out of sight. And Coyote is always hungry...Alex Etcity born to the Water is Close People