FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 30, 2026
CONTACT: Kevin Larsen, Media Director, 605-773-6000. Kevin.Larsen@state.sd.us

Badger Clark Book Wins Prestigious Award

PIERRE, S.D. - Badger Clark: Poetry Wrangler, published by the South Dakota Historical Society (SDHS) Press, has won the 2025 Western Heritage Wrangler Award in the Outstanding Juvenile Book category. The award was presented to the book’s author, Nancy Bo Flood, at the Western Heritage Awards ceremony on April 11, 2026.

The Western Heritage Awards are presented annually by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum located in Oklahoma City to honor the best works from the previous year in Western music, film, television, and literature. This is the second SDHS Press publication to win a Wrangler Award in recent years. Bighorn Visions: The Photography of Jessamine Spear Johnson by Tempe Javitz was awarded the 2023 Wrangler for Outstanding Photography Book.

Badger Clark: Poetry Wrangler, written by Nancy Bo Flood and illustrated by Jeanne Bowman, tells the story of the iconic Western writer and celebrates his enduring poetry. South Dakota’s first poet laureate, Badger Clark (1883–1957), is perhaps best known for his poem “A Cowboy’s Prayer,” erroneously attributed to “Anonymous” and a mainstay at rodeos across the United States. After spending much of his childhood in Deadwood, South Dakota, Badger Clark found his vocation as a cowboy and a poet in Arizona. Later in life, he returned to the Black Hills, where he lived in his cabin, “Badger Hole,” and continued to write.

Author Nancy Bo Flood describes Clark’s poetry as “Shakespeare meets Walt Whitman during a cattle drive” because he had a way of expressing the smooth, rolling, clip-clop rhythm of horse and rider. His legacy as a bard of the American West endures, and for over one hundred years, Clark’s poems have been sung and celebrated at poetry gatherings, rodeos, and many a cowboy’s final farewell.

To learn more about Badger Clark: Poetry Wrangler and SDHS Press’s other award-winning books, as well as South Dakota History, the quarterly journal of the South Dakota State Historical Society, visit the press website at www.sdhspress.com. Badger Clark: Poetry Wrangler is available for purchase at your favorite online and brick-and-mortar bookstores, as well as on the press website.

About the South Dakota State Historical Society

The South Dakota State Historical Society is a division of the Department of Education. The State Historical Society, an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution since 2013, is headquartered at the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre. For questions or memberships, call 605-773-3458 or visit history.sd.gov for more information. The society also has an archaeology office in Rapid City; call 605-394-1936 for more information.