About Jane Little Botkin

Award-winning author Jane (Janie) Little Botkin served as a public-school teacher for thirty years before turning to historical investigation and writing. In 2008 the Texas state legislature honored her career in education by formal resolution. 

A member of the Western Writers of America since 2017, Jane currently sits on its board of directors as vice-president. She also judges entries for the WWA's prestigious Spur Award and reviewed new releases.

A double Spur-Award-winner herself, Jane's book Frank Little and the IWW : The Blood That Stained an American Family (University of Oklahoma Press 2017) has also won the Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Western History and Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library, the Best Historical Nonfiction Award from the Texas Association of Authors, and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, High Plains Book Award, and Foreword Indies. The subject of the book is Botkin’s great-grand-uncle, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, who was lynched for his words on August 1, 1917.

Jane's biography of Denver labor organizer Jane Street (University of Oklahoma Press 2021) narrates Street's struggle to balance motherhood amidst a revolutionary movement in the aftermath of Colorado's Ludlow Massacre. This book won the prestigious Barbara Sudler Award and the Caroline Bancroft History Prize (only one of two authors to have won the latter award more than once!) The Girl Who Dared to Defy was also finalist for the Sarton Book Award, Colorado Humanities Book Award, and Women Writing the West's Willa Award in nonfiction; and finalist for the Foreword Indies Award in women's studies.

Jane third book, The Pink Dress, Memoir of a Guyrex Girl delves into the early world of Guyrex, the famous beauty-queen makers, at the same time revealing the author's coming of age among controlling forces outside the pageant world. It is tentatively scheduled for release August 2024 from She Writes Press.

Still in research phase, Jane anticipates Unintended Consequences: Mary Ann Goodnight, Orphan Mother of the Plains to be published in 2025. She is also planning biographies on Wyoming lawman Hank Boedeker (a friend of Butch Cassidy’s) and the elusive Etta Place.