James Hoy to be honored with Don Coldsmith Award at Sunflower State Book Festival on October 10, 2009

Nationally-respected author, editor, folklorist, and educator Dr. James F. Hoy will receive the 2009 Don Coldsmith Literary Award from Ad Astra Publishing at this year’s Sunflower State Book Festival. The Festival is being held on October 10, 2009, in the Osborne High School Gymnasium at 215 West Washington Street in Osborne, Kansas.

The Don Coldsmith Award is sponsored by the Osborne, Kansas-based company Ad Astra Publishing. The annual award pays tribute to a distinguished Kansas author whose lifetime contributions have utilized the written word to enhance the proud literary legacy of the Sunflower State.

Raised on a stock ranch near Cassoday, Kansas, James Hoy was chosen as the initial recipient of the Don Coldsmith Award for his acclaimed writings on ranching life around the world, his many years of molding young minds and budding writers as both a literature professor and an editor/consultant, and for being a respected lecturer and promoter of Kansas and Kansans in general.

In his lifetime Hoy’s writings have helped to popularize a distinct Western literary genre, that of the stories of ranching life, both historical and contemporary, of the Flint Hills of Kansas and across the Great Plains, as well as around the world. He is the author or co-author of nine books and has published over a hundred articles. In addition Hoy has co-written with fellow educator Tom Isern a popular weekly newspaper column since 1983 entitled Plains Folk.

Hoy's academic interests include Great Plains folklore, medieval English literature, Western American literature, Australian Outback folklife and literature. He is currently a Professor of English at Emporia State University, having taught there since 1971. In 1996 Hoy was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, serving as Chair for the last two years of his term (2001-2002). He is a member of the Editorial Committee of the University Press of Kansas and a manuscript consultant and referee for numerous university presses and literary magazines. Hoy is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Dr. Hoy is a highly sought-after speaker and lecturer and is a member of the Kansas Humanities Council Speaker Bureau. His eloquent and engaging style has served to present a positive view of Kansas to the entire world.

The Don Coldsmith Award is named after the prolific and internationally-popular Emporia, Kansas doctor who passed away recently on June 25, 2009. A primarily Western fiction author and past president of the Western Writers of America, Coldsmith wrote over 40 books, 150 articles and 1600 newspaper columns. He was named in a recent survey one of the Best 24 Western Authors of the Twentieth Century. His “Spanish Bit Saga,” a series of related novels, helped to redefine the Western novel by adopting the point of view of the Native Americans, rather than the European immigrants. There are more than six million copies of the “Saga” series in print, as well as editions in German, French and Swedish.

Ad Astra Publishing LLC was founded as a royalty press in 2007 by David Readio and Von Rothenberger. The company’s primary mission is promotion of the writing of literature by Kansas authors and about Kansas.