Don Herron Nominated for the 2010 Munsey Award

I’m pleased to announce my good friend and frequent TGR contributor Don Herron has just been nominated for a prestigious Munsey Award, which will be awarded next month at PulpFest 2010. Don is among the 16 nominees just announced at the PulpFest website.  Also nominated is another friend of TGR, Mike Chomko.  The Munsey Award is the successor to the Lamont Award, which was given out annually at the now defunct Pulpcon. This is the second year the award will be given out.  Last year’s award went to Bill Thom, the webmaster of the Howard Works website and the popular Coming Attractions webpage.

Given his important contributions in a variety of pulp related literary fields, I’m not surprised Don was nominated.  Much like Hammett’s the Continental Op, he is always one step of everyone else and on the cutting edge of literary discoveries and criticism.

For decades Don has written thousands upon thousands of words on Robert E. Howard and his writings. Last year Don’s two volumes of Howard literary criticism celebrated important anniversaries.

Don was onboard TGR from the beginning, both as an artist and an author.  In 1976, his groundbreaking “Conan v. Conantics” essay appeared in issue TGR #3.  In that epic piece of writing, Don went toe to toe with L. Sprague de Camp, the dean of Howardom at that time, and emerged victorious after pointing out discrepancies and flaws in his and Lin Carter’s editing and fill-in-the-gaps technique used in the Lancer Conan series.

So I tip my fedora to Don, one of the good guys who year after year consistently fights the good fight, spreading the word about Howard and a host of other whiskey drinking, gat carrying, two-fisted literary giants.