Awards Announcement: Our Authors’ Recent Wins

The University Press of Florida proudly presents our most recent award-winning titles and authors!

For The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World, Nathaniel Millett has received two new awards: the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award in the field of history and the Gulf South Historical Association Michael V.R. Thomason best book award.

The Alpha Sigma Nu awards recognize outstanding publishing achievement in the humanities and sciences. The Michael V.R. Thomason award celebrates the best book on the history of the Gulf South. Millett’s The Maroons of Prospect Bluff examines how the maroons constructed their freedom, offering a rare opportunity to examine black consciousness during the era of slavery. Earlier this year, the book also received the Rembert Patrick Book Award from the Florida Historical Society. Last year, Millett was second-runner up in the Florida Book Awards for nonfiction, receiving a bronze medal.

Ann M. Axtmann received the 2013 Northeast Popular Culture Association’s Peter C. Rollins book award for Indians and Wannabes: Native American Powwow Dancing in the Northeast and Beyond.

The award, named for popular culture scholar and NEPCA benefactor Peter C. Rollins, honors a new book that has made a valuable contribution to the discipline of American cultural studies. The sacred tradition of powwow dance in Native American culture is examined in Axtmann’s work, revealing how these dancers express and embody power through their moving bodies.

The Association of Black Women Historians awarded its 2014 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award for best work by a junior scholar to Cherisse Jones-Branch for Crossing the Line: Women’s Interracial Activism in South Carolina during and after World War II.

The award is presented to the best book in the field of African American Women’s history, and the award committee praised Crossing the Line as “among the best that embodies the spirit of this award.”

“In this work, Jones-Branch highlights the often overlooked contributions of African American women in the Civil Rights Movement. She also highlights the interracial cooperation that existed during the 1940s, which directly impacted the later civil rights struggle of the 1960s. By highlighting the work of these women, Jones-Branch removes black women from the fringes of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and places them in their rightful place at the center of the movement. This contribution to the history of African American women is much needed and is a must read for those interested in the struggle for civil rights,” the committee chair noted.

Bob H. Lee won the 2014 Florida Outdoor Writers Association Book Award for Excellence-in-Craft for Backcountry Lawman: True Stories from a Florida Game Warden. With thirty years of backcountry patrol experience in Florida, Lee has lived through incidents of legend, including one of the biggest environmental busts in Florida history. His fascinating memoir reveals the danger and the humor in the unsung exploits of game wardens.

Congratulations to all of our award-winning authors!