Laurie Powers has been named the winner of the 2016 Munsey Award. Nominated by the general pulp community, Laurie was selected through a vote cast by all the living Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Award winners. The award is a fine art print created by Dan Zimmer of a David Saunders painting, presented annually to a person who has worked for the betterment of the pulp community. J. Barry Traylor, the recipient of the 2014 Rusty Award presented Laurie were her well-deserved Munsey.
The granddaughter of pulp author Paul S. Powers, Laurie was introduced to the pulp community in 2007 through the publication of PULP WRITER: TWENTY YEARS IN THE AMERICAN GRUB STREET, an autobiography and appreciation of her grandfather. She has also edited several collections of her grandfather’s work in various genres, releasing a number of previously unpublished stories. In 2013, she helped to arrange the donation of her grandfather’s personal papers as well more than 400 pulp magazines featuring his work to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Ohio State University in Columbus. Laurie also publishes Laurie’s Wild West, an Internet blog site that has become a favorite destination for those interested in the pulps. She has published articles on “Who Read the Pulps?,” female pulp writers, a series of articles put together by various pulp fans entitled “My Favorite Pulps,” and many other topics. Although relatively new to the world of pulps, Laurie has shown tremendous support for the community by spreading the word about pulp fiction and publicizing the conventions that salute our wonderful hobby. She is currently working on a biography of pulp editor Daisy Bacon, editor of LOVE STORY MAGAZINE. At PulpFest 2016, Laurie presented “100 Years of the Specialty Pulp — LOVE STORY MAGAZINE and the Romance Pulp Phenomenon” during our evening programming on Thursday, July 22.
In a surprise announcement during on Friday evening programming on July 23, David Saunders was presented with a special “retro” Lamont Award to recognize his substantial service to the pulp community over the years. Since a limited edition of thirty-six numbered and signed prints — designed by David — serves as the Munsey and Rusty awards, it was decided to honor David’s significant contributions to the pulp world with one of the few remaining copies of Pulpcon‘s Lamont Award. The award was presented by our 2015 Munsey Award winner, Stephen T. Miller.
Born in 1954, David Saunders is a New York artist. His work has been collected worldwide and can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Hirschhorn Museum of Art in Washington, DC. He has taught art at Yale, Oberlin, and the Kansas City Art Institute, as well as art schools in France, Korea, Mexico and Japan.
David’s father was the legendary illustrator, Norman Saunders. His mother, Ellene Politis Saunders, worked at Fawcett Publications as Chief Executive Editor for WOMAN’S DAY. In 1972, David became his father’s business secretary, which started a long project to catalog his father’s 7,000 published illustrations. He spent the next seventeen years gathering published examples of his father’s work from used bookshops and submitting each new entry to his father’s inspection. What began as a sentimental hobby for a father and son grew into an impressive archive of 20th century American illustration. After his father’s death in 1989, he completed the archive on his own. He interviewed his father’s surviving associates to record their oral histories. These transcripts helped to broaden his viewpoint of the popular culture publishing industry and also documented vital information about the lives of other artists. Some of this material has been published as biographical profiles in ILLUSTRATION MAGAZINE and several coffee-table art books on pulp artists.
David is, quite probably, the foremost scholar of American pulp illustrators. His free public website, Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists, has over three-hundred biographical profiles of these creators of popular culture. David continues to research, document, and promote a greater appreciation of pulp artists. To find out more, please visit davidsaunders.biz, normansaunders.com, and theillustratedpress.com.
Congratulations to both Laurie and David.
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2017 Munsey and/or Rusty Awards. If you have someone in mind that you feel worthy of either award, please send the person’s name and a brief paragraph describing why you feel that person should be honored to Mike Chomko, 2217 W. Fairview Street, Allentown, PA 18104-6542 or to mike@pulpfest.com. Previous winners of the Lamont, Munsey, or Rusty Award are not eligible for the award. Click here for a list of our previous winners.
The deadline for nominations is May 31, 2017. Please click here for additional details. Thanks for your help.
