Southwest Books of the Year
Panelist Bios
Lesley Bailey
Lesley Bailey is a New Hampshire native Bailey who has taught English composition on a college level and English as a second language in Japan. Four years ago she moved to Tucson to join the staff of the University of Arizona’s stimulating new venture, the Arizona International College where she now manages the college’s internship program.
I am a generalist," Bailey says, "whose interests include, history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, Spanish language and Mexican culture. I spend my free time reading, exploring new and familiar parts of the southwest by car or on foot, and just enjoying waking up every day to "blue mountains far away."
Deborah Bock
A midwesterner, Deborah Bock says she grew up with a "hankering" for the open landscapes of "cowboy and Indian," country. That fascination never waned. "I like to think," she says, " that I have educated myself beyond the mythology."
With degrees in both journalism and library science, Bock spent ten years in the Four Corners area where she was a librarian and faculty member at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. She moved to Tucson in 1985. She is an information services librarian in the Pima County Public Library system. Southwestern literature has been a lifelong avocational reading interest and has, she believes, enhanced her abilities as a reference librarian.
Bruce Dinges
Bruce Dinges has served on this panel since 1987, and he thinks it is always an interesting experience to look back and see how past years' selections have held up.
"In selecting my top ten southwestern titles, I look for books that tell me something new or that lead me to look at the region in fresh ways," he says. "A well-written book always gets my attention. But it also has to have depth. Whether it's a natural history of the Sonoran Desert or the story of one person's attempt to reconnect with the past, it should be both authorative and meaningful. Probably the most important question I ask myself when selecting my best picks is: 'Will this book still be in my library ten years from now?'"
Joyce Lane Whaley
Joyce Whaley has lived in Tucson since 1960. She is a former manager of the Haunted Bookshop, from which she retired in 1992.
"I’ve always been a reader, learned from my father who usually spent his spare time buried in a book," says Joyce. "My favorite reading is historical novels and mysteries though my all-time favorite book is War and Peace by Tolstoi. As I finish a book for the Southwest Best Picks list, I jot down some thoughts about it then when I pick my favorites I write them up for submittal."
Norman P. Whaley
Norman Whaley was born on a small bay on northern Lake Michigan—and into a family that loved books (He says that he can only vaguely remember his maternal grandmother’s library with the complete works of Goethe and Schiller along with many of the English and American classics). His love of fiction and adventure travel in reading evolved into an even stronger interest in natural history and related nonfiction when the family moved to the desert south of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1943. Then in his teens, he discovered rocks and minerals. After twenty some years as a field geologist, modern-age restructuring in the industry forced an early retirement. He says, "Of greatest interest today is natural history which embodies elements of creativity and/or art."