Velda Brotherton

Fly With The Mourning Dove is a WILLA finalist for 2008. The WILLA is a literary award, given in honor of Willa Cather, for outstanding books about women in the west. Each category has a winner and two finalists. Awards will be presented in San Antonio in October at the Women Writing the West Conference.

A native of Arkansas, Velda Brotherton has been writing for 23 years. Her first articles appeared in local newspapers, then she became features editor for a weekly paper near her hometown. Out of that grew a weekly historical article, Wandering The Ozarks, which she continues to write today for The White River Valley News in Elkins, Arkansas.

Her first non fiction book was published in April of 1994 and her first novel under the pen name of Elizabeth Gregg was published in October of that same year. She has a total of six novels and four non fiction books published. Recently, one of her early western historical romances, Images In Scarlet published under the pen name of Samantha Lee, was issued through the back-in-print program with Authors Guild and iUniverse. A total of eight of her short stories have been published in anthologies. Two more are upcoming. Four of her entries are online in the Arkansas Encyclopedia and one in Arkansas Biographies published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004 a documentary, Velda Brotherton: Living Among the Shadows of Time, about her efforts to preserve Ozark history, was filmed and shown at the Arkansas FilmFest and on AETN.

Brotherton is a member of Women Writing the West, Ozark Writers League, Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc., Missouri Writers Guild and Northwest Arkansas Writers Workshop. She helped begin a Friends of the Library organization in her small hometown and served as its president for three years. She speaks at conferences and holds writing workshops regionally. Velda is currently finishing two novels and a memoir of her nine years working for a small weekly newspaper.

The author lives in the Ozark National Forest in a home she designed and helped build. She and her husband have two children, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Her favorite pastimes, other than writing, are family get-togethers, traveling, reading, swimming and enjoying the many flower gardens her husband cultivates.

"Writing has become a way of life for me," she says. "In this business I have met so many wonderful people and have made lasting friendships. I can’t think of a better way to spend my time than with the characters who people my books and those who are engaged in this sometimes zany writing life."

The trip to San Antonio to pick up my 2008 finalist WILLA award took us in a roundabout way. We went to the San Luis valley in Colorado to visit Edna Hiller, the subject of my WILLA award winning book, then on to New Mexico for some fishing on the Red River, then headed for San Antonio, some 900 miles away.
The Women Writing the West Conference was a super experience. I served on two panels and attended both the luncheon where I received my award and the banquet where the winners received their awards.
On the way home we drove along the Gulf and took some time at Padre Island to enjoy the "near" ocean breezes. Then we drove home.
Signed a contract with one of the editors I met at the conference and am negotiating with another, so it was a worthwhile trip in more ways than one.