Hall Center announces 2023 Byron Caldwell Smith Book Awards

LAWRENCE — The Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas has announced the winners of the 2023 Byron Caldwell Smith Book Awards.

Charles Forrest Jones won the fiction award for “The Illusion of Simple,” a mystery novel set in a western Kansas county in the 1980s. 

Ben Chappell received the nonfiction award for his book “Mexican American Fastpitch: Identity at Play in Vernacular Sport.”

Jones is the retired director of KU's Public Management Center and was a courtesy associate professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration. 

Described by one reviewer as “an unflinchingly intimate epic,” the book follows the efforts of a pugnacious sheriff to solve a murder by sifting through not-so-simple politics, racism and loyalties of small-town Kansas. 

The book was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2022.

Published in 2021 by Stanford University Press, Chappell's ethnography of Mexican American fastpitch explores the cultural significance and enduring legacy of fastpitch softball within the Mexican American community. 

Chappell, professor of American studies, uses research and storytelling to trace the sport's roots from its origins in the early 20th century to its flourishing presence in Mexican American neighborhoods across the United States.

The Byron Caldwell Smith Awards were established at the bequest of Kate Stephens, a former KU student and one of KU's first women professors. 

As an undergraduate in the 1870s, Stephens learned to love the study of Greek language and literature from Professor Byron Caldwell Smith. In his name, she established this award, given biennially to individuals who live or are employed in Kansas and who have written outstanding books published in the previous two years. 

The next application cycle will be in spring 2025.