Richard Shelton's book is the Southwest's Top Pick of '07.

More Photos (5):

Other articles by J. C. Martin:

'Crossing the Yard' wins acclaim of every panelist

Sales and Marketing
Davis Kitchens
Cabinet Sales Administrative & Professional
City of Benson
Planning & Zoning Director

It started as a courtesy, a response to a plea from an inmate who wrote asking for some literary guidance. Three decades later, it has become a cross between a crusade and a calling. "Crossing the Yard: Thirty Years As a Prison Volunteer" (University of Arizona Press, $17.95), is emeritus University of Arizona Professor Richard Shelton's account of teaching creative writing in Arizona prisons.

For the 2007 edition of Southwest Books of the Year, "Crossing the Yard" is the Top Pick. It is one of those rare selections that showed up on the list of each of the seven panelists.

In its 31st year, started at the Arizona Daily Star and now a part of the Pima Public Library's Southwest Literature Project, Southwest Books of the Year is an annual survey of contemporary Southwest literature.

Other books on this year's top list — and to be in the top group a book must be selected by more than one panelist — are listed below.

"Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride" (W.W. Norton, $25.95), by journalist and serious history buff Michael Wallis, was selected by five panelists. It is described as "winnowing a massive amount of grain from chaff," (but) it probably won't be the last.

"Brujerias: Stories of Witchcraft and the Supernatural in the American Southwest and Beyond" (Texas Tech University Press, $34.95) by Nasario Garcia is 125 supernatural tales collected over several decades and include sworn testimonials as to their veracity.

"Hecho en Tejas: An Anthology of Texas-Mexican Literature" (University of New Mexico Press, $34.95), edited by writer and Southwest Texas State faculty member Dagoberto Gilb: Although the emphasis is on the 1930s to the present, Gilb's lively sampling includes memoirs, songs, letters, photographs and paintings.

"House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest" by Craig Leland Childs (Little, Brown and Co., $24.99): Around 1100 A.D., Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico was the center of a flourishing Pueblo culture. Three hundred years later, it was gone. Childs is one of the latest to attempt to solve this mystery.

"Pulp Writer: Twenty Years in the American Grub Street" (University of Nebraska Press, $19.95) by Paul S. Powers and edited by Laurie Powers: Paul Powers' autobiography disappeared into a closet for 40 years until his enterprising granddaughter found it, annotated it and unveiled its extraordinary account of a writing life at the lower end of the critical spectrum.

"Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone and Light: The Chronicles of Northern New Spain, 1530-1821" (University of Arizona Press, $75) by Gloria Kay Giffords: Panelist Laird who selected this along with Bruce Dinges identifies it as a valuable resource book for, "anyone with a serious interest in religious architecture in the Southwest."

"The Walk" by William DeBuys (Trinity University Press, $22.95): Living in a two-room cottage on New Mexico's "Rio de las Trampas," (trampa in Spanish means a fraud or trap), DeBuys considers the world at large from the tiny one around him. The panel called it "a quiet book for a comfortable chair."

There are a total of 40 titles selected by this year's panelists. They are available in a free, colorful brochure found in abundance at Pima Public libraries scattered throughout the county. Also listed are five children's titles, selected by Cathy Jacobus, a Pima County Library reference librarian.

Two Special Attention titles that don't qualify in the general competition because they have a close connection with one of the panelists are: "Dry Borders: Great Natural Reserves of the Sonoran Desert," edited by Bill Broyles and Richard Stephen Felger (University of Utah Press, $45), and "Buffalo Soldiers in the West: A Black Soldiers Anthology," edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles (Texas A&M University Press, $19.95), for which Bruce Dinges supplied an entry on Black West Pointer Henry O. Flipper.