Sorry I forgot to pass this on while fresh. -- jws Small-press publisher tops Governor's Writers Award list http://www.seattletimes.com/news/entertainment/html98/govs_090198.html by Donn Fry <dfry-new@seatimes.com> Seattle Times book editor Posted at 06:13 a.m. PDT; Tuesday, September 1, 1998 An 86-year-old small-press publisher who has kept alive the history of the Pacific Northwest through more than 60 years and 600 books heads the list of winners of the 1998 Governor's Writers Awards. Glen C. Adams has managed to do that while battling multiple sclerosis for more than half a century - the last 16 years from a wheelchair. "Well, I feel pretty flattered," Adams said of winning the Nancy Blankenship Pryor Award, a career-achievement honor for contributions to the literary culture of Washington state. "I knew Nancy Pryor, and she was sufficiently interested to stop by twice over the years and see what I was doing." A longtime librarian at the State Library in Olympia, Pryor was founder and developer of of the Washington/Northwest Room and the Washington authors' collection, and in 1966 she helped create the Governor's Writers Awards. She died in 1991, and the career award was named in her memory in 1992. Ten other Washington residents were named winners of the 32nd annual Governor's Writers Awards, which were announced today in Olympia by the co-sponsoring Washington State Library and the Washington Commission for the Humanities. Chosen from among the authors of more than 400 books published by Washington state writers during 1997, the winning writers are: -- Peter Bacho of Seattle for "Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories" (University of Washington Press), a short-story collection about Seattle's Filipino immigrant community. -- Bruce Barcott, a writer and editor for Seattle Weekly, for his book, "The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier" (Sasquatch). -- Teresa Bateman of Tacoma for "The Ring of Truth: An Original Irish Tale" (Holiday House). -- Linda Bierds, a poet who teaches at the University of Washington, for her collection, "The Profile Makers: Poems" (Henry Holt). -- Chief Lelooska, who died in 1996, an expert on Northwest Coast Indian art from Ariel, Cowlitz County, for "Echoes of the Elders: The Stories and Paintings of Chief Lelooska" (DK Ink). -- George B. Dyson of Bellingham for "Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence" (Addison-Wesley). -- Edward J. Larson, a University of Georgia historian who also lives at Stanwood, for his Pulitzer Prize-winning study, "Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion" (Basic Books). -- Nancy Rawles, the Seattle author of the novel "Love Like Gumbo" (Fjord Press). -- Shelby Scates, a Seattle journalist, for his biographical study, "Warren G. Magnuson and the Making of the Twentieth Century" (University of Washington Press). -- J. William T. Youngs, an Eastern Washington University historian and author of "The Fair and the Falls: Spokane's Expo '74: Transforming an American Environment" (Eastern Washington University Press). The awards will be presented Oct. 25 during the annual Northwest Bookfest at Pier 48 on the Seattle waterfront. The noon ceremony will feature readings and comments from most of the winners, though Adams said his infirmities will likely keep him home. Adams operates Ye Galleon Press in Fairfield, a Spokane County community where he also farmed for a number of years. The press publishes a combination of reprints and original works that chronicle Pacific Northwest history. Just yesterday, Adams was binding a new paperback edition of "Fire Lookouts of the Northwest," a history of lookout stations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana by Ray Kresek, a retired firefighter who lives in Spokane. Adams has been at it since 1937, when he founded the press while still a student at Eastern Washington University. He began by handsetting type and printing his books on an old letterpress machine. "That's for the birds now," he said. "We do everything almost exclusively by offset press, after setting it by computer." Adams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 51 years ago, he said, and has never had a remission - "just a slow, steady, progressive paralysis." Though he began using the wheelchair in 1982, he still helps care for his wife, Jean, who has been an invalid for a number of years. "I'm still working five days a week and still getting out books," he said. "I'm into this up to my ears." The largest market for Ye Galleon Press books is university and college libraries, Adams said, noting that in addition to the U.S. Library of Congress, his books are included in the national libraries of Canada, Spain, New Zealand and Australia, as well as the Vatican. "I think the standing order I'm most proud of," he added, "is Yale University." The Ivy League school's library has a contract to receive every book that Adams publishes - which now total 676, though that figure includes separate hardcover and paperback editions of some titles. The veteran publisher is not without other honors. In 1990, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Spokane's Gonzaga University, and the previous year he was one of the original inductees into the Washington State Historical Society's Centennial Hall of Honor. Despite Ye Galleon Press' importance to historians, librarians and universities, Adams admitted that his little company typically runs at a loss. "We've been in the black three times, but usually it's a sad story," he said. "But I love making books, and at my age, I might as well keep on doing it." 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