Arts & Humanities
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LOGAN – The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies at Utah State University awarded the Evans Awards to authors whose selected works focused on the importance of documenting individual lives and their impact – the first examining the complex biography of Joseph Smith and the other telling the story of an important poet, May Swenson. The 2026 Evans Biography Award went to John G. Turner, and Margaret A. Brucia won the 2026 Evans Handcart Award.A national jury selected John G. Turner’s volume, “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet” as the winner of the Evans Biography Award. “Joseph Smith” focuses on Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1944), a religious leader who published the Book of Mormon and started what became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Turner’s biography draws insights from newly accessible diaries, church records, and transcripts of sermons to illuminate Smith’s journey from impoverished farmhand to religious leader, crafting a balanced and extensively researched account of the Mormon prophet’s life.“The Key to Everything: May Swenson, A Writer’s Life” is an intimate and detailed biography of the American poet with a focus on the period between 1936-1959 when Swenson was living in New York City. Swenson (1913-1989) was born in Logan, Utah to Danish immigrant parents and came of age as a writer during the Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project, and the emergence of gay culture. Margaret A. Brucia examines this period through Swenson’s own words through unpublished diaries and letters to friends, family, and colleagues.The Evans Awards recognize the best of research and writing in biographies, autobiographies and memoirs that focus on the stories of people who have shaped the character of the Interior West. The Evans Biography Award comes with a cash prize of $10,000, and the Evans Handcart Award winner is presented with $2,500. The prizes are made possible through an endowment created in 1983 by the family of David Woolley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans.Center Director, Molly Cannon, remarked, “The Evans Awards offer an incredible opportunity for Utah State University to showcase pinnacle works of the American West. We are grateful for the Evans Family and their continued support of writers and scholars in our communities.”The regional jury named one additional work as Evans Handcart Award Finalist from the over thirty submissions received. Laurie Lee Hall’s memoir “Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman” offers an articulate, forthright, and, at times, heartbreaking narrative of what it meant to transition from holding a patriarchal role in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to being a woman.Awardees were chosen from works published in 2024 and 2025 and submitted to the national and regional juries for consideration. Winners will be honored at an awards ceremony occurring in tandem with the Arrington Mormon History Lecture on the Logan campus on September 25th.The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies is an outreach center in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences that works to provide public programs, student scholarships, research and program funding, visiting scholars, and other projects directed at enhancing the work of Utah State University.
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A national jury selected John G. Turner's volume, "Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet" as the winner of the Evans Biography Award.
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Margaret A. Brucia won the 2026 Evans Handcart Award for her work on the biography "The Key to Everything: May Swenson, A Writer's Life".
CONTACT
Molly Boeka Cannon
Director
Mountain West Center for Regional Studies
435-797-7545
molly.cannon@usu.edu
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