Ana Maria Spagna won an award from the University of Nebraska for her new book, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey. She will read from the book and sign copies at Darvill’s Bookstore on Monday, May 24th at 7 p.m.
The Stehekin writer won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction prize from the prestigious press for the story of her father and five other men who integrated a city bus in Florida in 1957. Part memoir about her father, who died when Spagna was eleven years old, and part civil rights era cultural history, the story also weaves in her struggle to deal with her mother’s teminal cancer along the way.
Spagna’s first book, Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw, was named a best book of 2004 by the Seattle Times. She has also been widely published in such publications such as “Orion,” “Utne Reader,” and the” North American Review. “
