A little over a week ago, the Coalition had the pleasure of recognizing recipients of the Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award at our CCCC Wednesday evening event in Spokane. The Horner Award recognizes outstanding scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and theory and carries a $200.00 honorarium. For this award cycle, the selection committee read and discussed 20 outstanding, diverse books—monographs and edited collection from multiple presses—published in calendar year 2022 or 2023. From among this impressive pool of nominated books, the committee selected two winners and four honorable mentions. 

Our first award winner is Heather Brook Adams for her book, Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction (U of South Carolina P, 2022). Dr. Adams is associate professor of English and a cross-appointed faculty member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the  University of North Carolina Greensboro. In addition, she has coedited Inclusive Aims: Rhetoric’s Role in Reproductive Justice (Parlor P, 2024) with Nancy Myers, and her work has appeared in journals including Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, Rhetoric Review, Women’s Studies in Communication, Peitho, Computers and Composition, and Pedagogy as well as in several edited collections. She currently directs the UNCG Humanities Network and Consortium.

Our second award winner is V. Jo Hsu for their book, Constellating Home:Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2022). Dr. Hsu is assistant professor of Rhetoric & Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. They approach rhetorical studies through the lens of disability justice, queer and trans of color critique, and critical ethnic studies. The questions driving their work are: What can the field(s) of rhetoric do to foster connection and care across difference? And, what stories must we tell to remake worlds conducive to one another’s thriving? You access most of their work via www.vjohsu.com.

Honorable mentions were conveyed to the following scholars:

Jane Greer for Unorganized Women: Repetitive Rhetorical Labor and Low-Wage Workers, 1834-1937 (U of Pittsburgh P, 2023). Dr. Greer is a Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English Department at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where she is also affiliated faculty member with the Center for Digital and Public Humanities. Her archival research focuses on the rhetorical performances and literacy practices of women and girls in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and she has collaborated with museums and cultural institutions across the Kansas City region to create opportunities for students to share stories of our collective past by composing museum tours and creating exhibits.

Leigh Gruwell for Making Matters: Craft, Ethics, and New Materialist Rhetorics (Utah State UP, 2022). Dr. Gruwell is associate professor of English at Auburn University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing and rhetoric. Gruwell’s research centers on digital, feminist, and new materialist rhetorics as well as composition pedagogy and research methodologies. Along with Charles N. Lesh, she is the editor of Mentorship/Methodology: Reflections, Praxis, Futures.

Jennifer Nish for Activist Literacies: Transnational Feminisms and Social Media Rhetorics (U of South Carolina P, 2022). Dr. Nish is associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Michigan Technological University. Her research engages with transnational feminism, digital media, activist rhetoric, and disability. Her research is also published in College Composition and Communication, Peitho, and several edited collections. Her current projects include a co-edited collection (with Belinda Walzer, Mais Al-Khateeb, and Sweta Baniya) titled (Re)Mobilizing Solidarity in/and Transnational Feminist Rhetorics and a book project that explores the activism and advocacy of people with Long Covid and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

Jacqueline Jones Royster for Making the World a Better Place: African American Women Advocates, Activists, and Leaders, 1773-1990 (U of Pittsburgh P, 2023). Dr. Royster is former Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology and Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology (2010-2019), and Professor Emerita at both The Ohio State University and Georgia Tech. In addition to Making the World a Better Place, her book publications include  Double-Stitch:  Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters (co-edited, 1991); Southern Horrors and Other Writings:  The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1997; 2^nd edition 2016), Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women (2000), Profiles of Ohio Women, 1803-2003 (2003); Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture (co-edited, 2005); Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies (co-authored with Gesa Kirsch, 2012, and recipient of the 2014 Horner Book Award); one college textbook and two school textbook series. She is also past recipient of The Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize and the Frances Andrew March Award from the MLA and the Braddock Award and the Exemplar Award from CCCC. She has also been named a Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America.

Congratulations to all recipients! 

The Coalition would like to extend sincere gratitude to the members of the 2024 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award committee:

• Risa Applegarth, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
• Nicole Clawson, University of Utah
• Regina Duthely-Barbee, University of Puget Sound
• Nanette Hilton, College of Southern Nevada, *Committee Chair
• Jennifer Love, Lane Community College

THANK YOU for all you do for the Coalition!

-Wendy Sharer, Immediate Past President and Awards Coordinator