Nazaré wins New Mexico-Arizona Book Award

Nazaré: a novel has won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Literary Fiction. It was a joint winner alongside Brandon Hobson’s superb The Removed. Back in 2021, I invited Brandon to speak at Southwest Word Fiesta; he was brilliant. Among the other winners was First & Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100 (Torrey House Press),…

“Nazaré” nominated for Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

I’m thrilled to announce that Nazaré has made it onto the shortlist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. The book is in extremely good company, with several authors whose work I admire, especially Ladee Hubbard and the protean Percival Everett. A list of previous winners of the award reads like a who’s who of…

Nazaré wins Foreword INDIES book award

The Foreword INDIES awards recognize the best books published in 2021 from small, independent, and university presses. For this year’s competition, over 2,700 entries were submitted in 55 categories, with Foreword’s editors choosing the finalists. Those titles were then mailed to librarians and booksellers charged with picking the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mention winners,…

Launch of “Nazaré: a novel”

We launched “Nazaré: a novel” in Light Hall, Western New Mexico University, on Oct 21, 2021 in an event billed as “Jack Crocker in conversation with JJ Amaworo Wilson.” Crocker, my great friend, is the author of the poetry collections The Last Resort and, most recently, The Algorithm of I. The latter is the inaugural…