LINCOLN, Neb. – A member of the faculty at Northeast Community College has earned statewide recognition for her writing. English Instructor Bonnie Johnson-Bartee’s book, Cord Blood, has been selected to receive Celebrate Nebraska’s 2023 Book Award Poetry Honor.
It is one of 14 honors the organization will present to authors of other books during an awards celebration event at the Nebraska Center for the Book’s Celebration of Nebraska Books at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln City Campus Union on Saturday, Oct. 14. Winners of the 2023 Nebraska Book Awards will be honored and the celebration will include readings by some of the winning authors, designers and illustrators of books with a Nebraska connection published in 2022.
An overview describes Cord Blood as Johnson-Bartee casting “a tender yet searing eye upon family histories, dynamics, and the very notion of "women's work," and each poem in this collection takes the reader on a journey toward recognizing how vulnerable and fallible we all are in our search for a meaningful life.”
Johnson-Bartee coordinates Northeast Community College’s Visiting Writer’s Series, which brings in authors and poets throughout the academic year to speak in Union 73. The Visiting Writer’s Series is open to the public. She also served as co-coordinator of the Nebraska Poetry Festival held last year at Northeast Community College and Wayne State College.
Other categories of winners who will be honored at the Celebrate Nebraska’s 2023 Award event in Lincoln are children’s design, young adult, design, illustration, fiction, and several classifications of non-fiction.
The Celebration of Nebraska Books will also honor winners of the 2023 Jane Geske and Mildred Bennett awards. The Mildred Bennett Award recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to fostering the literary tradition in Nebraska while the Jane Geske Award is presented to a Nebraska organization for exceptional contribution to literacy, books, reading, libraries, or literature in Nebraska.
The 2023 One Book One Nebraska selection, The Mystery of Hunting’s End by Mignon Eberhart (Bison Books, 1998) will be featured in a keynote presentation. The introduction of the 2024 One Book One Nebraska book choice will conclude the festivities.
The Celebration of Nebraska Books is sponsored by Nebraska Center for the Book and the Nebraska Library Commission, with support from History Nebraska’s Nebraska History Museum. Humanities Nebraska
Humanities Nebraska provides support for One Book One Nebraska. The Nebraska Center for the Book is housed at the Nebraska Library Commission and brings together the state’s readers, writers, booksellers, librarians, publishers, printers, educators, and scholars to build the community of the book, supporting programs to celebrate and stimulate public interest in books, reading, and the written word. The Nebraska Center for the Book is supported by the National Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Nebraska Library Commission.
As the state library agency, the Nebraska Library Commission is an advocate for the library and the information needs of all Nebraskans. The mission of the Library Commission is statewide promotion, development, and coordination of library and information services, “bringing together people and information.”
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