Sally and Ken Owens Award

The Western History Association announces the Owens Book Award given annually for the best book on the history of the Pacific West, including Alaska, Hawaii, Western Canada, and the U.S. Pacific territories. The Award is $500 to the author and a certificate to the publisher. The award is supported by the Sally and Ken Owens Trust and administered by the Western History Association. View a list of past recipients.

Publishers may submit more than one title each year. All submissions must have a 2018 publication date. Presses should submit nominations and a copy of the book to each member of the award committee listed below. 

Award Submission (postmark) Deadline: April 15, 2019
The award recipient and editor/publisher will be notified by September 15.


2019 Sally and Ken Owens Award Committee

Joshua L. Reid, Chair
University of Washington
 Department of History
University of Washington
318 Smith, Box 35360
 Seattle, WA 98195-3560
 jlreid@uw.edu

Clifford Trafzer
University of California, Riverside

University of California, Riverside
1212 HMNSS
Riverside, CA 92521
clifford.trafzer@ucr.edu

Joy Schulz
Metropolitan Community College, Nebraska

8425 South 101st Street
La Vista, NE 68128
jschulz@mccneb.edu


Life-long residents of the Pacific Northwest, Sally and Ken Owens met and married while attending Lewis and Clark College. Subsequently they moved to Minneapolis, where in 1959 Ken completed his Ph.D. in western history at the University of Minnesota.  They then moved to DeKalb, where he taught at Northern Illinois University.  Following the birth of their two daughters, Sally began grad school at NIU in microbiology.  In 1968 Ken took a position at California State University, Sacramento. Sally finished her microbiology Ph.D. at University of California, Davis, in 1974, and she too then became a member of the CSUS faculty. They remained at CSUS until retirement, Sally in 1996 and Ken in 2000.

Past Recipients

2018 | Joy Schulz for Hawaiian By Birth: Missionary Children, Bicultural Identity, and U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)

2017 | John W. Troutman for Kīkā Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music (University of South Carolina Press, 2016).

2016 | Joshua Reid for The Sea is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (Yale University Press, 2015)

2014 | David Igler for The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 


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