Mary Relindes Ellis's "The Turtle Warrior" is Banta Award Winner

The Literary Awards Committee of the Wisconsin Library Association's Reader's Section has selected Mary Relindes Ellis’s novel The Turtle Warrior as the winner of the Banta Award. The award is for the highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author in 2004. The Turtle Warrior is Hammond resident Ellis’s first novel. It is a powerful tale of two brothers living on a failing farm in northern Wisconsin with a violent alcoholic father. The Turtle Warrior is a dark, emotionally powerful book that will stay with the reader for a long time.

The Banta Award is made possible by the Banta Corporation Foundation through a grant to the WLA Foundation.

The Literary Awards Committee also chose three Notable Wisconsin Authors for their body of work: Robert Bloch (Milwaukee), author of many short stories and novels in the horror field including the novel upon which Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho was based, Irving Wallace (Kenosha), author of bestselling novels including The Chapman Report, The Prize, and The Man, and historian John Gurda, a Milwaukee native whose most recent work is The Making of Milwaukee.

The Literary Awards Committee also selected ten books for Outstanding Achievement. These titles, all published in 2004, were also written by Wisconsin authors. The books are:
Chang, Lan Samantha (Appleton). Inheritance.
Davis, Tom (Green Bay). The Tattered Autumn Sky: Bird Hunting in the Heartland.
Kercheval. Jesse Lee (Madison). Dog Angel: Poems.
Logue, Mary (Stockholm). Bone Harvest.
Meacham, Rebecca (Green Bay). Let’s Do.
Mitchell, Judith Claire (Madison). The Last Day of the War.
Nelscott, Kris (pseudonym of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Superior). Stone Cribs.
Stefaniak, Mary Helen (Milwaukee). The Turk and My Mother.
Tyson, Timothy B. (Madison). Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story.
Vreeland, Susan (Racine).The Forest Lover.

The 2005 Literary Award Committee members are: Sandra Sechrest (chair), Patricia Bordak, Nanette Bulebosh, Beverly DeWeese, Susan Bushouse Foran, John Hendricks, Anne Kasuboski, Constance Mahsem, Catherine Morris-Nelson, and Edell Schaefer.

For more information about the work of the Literary Awards Committee, go to http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/lac/.