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Silver Pen Award Recipient 2002
Carolyn Dufurrena

Author of text for Fifty Miles from Home, University of Nevada Press.

Graduate of Wellesley College, B.A., geology;
University of Texas, Austin, M.S., geology.

Primary schoolteacher in rural Nevada; writer; rancher; former uranium geologist.

At the moment, Carolyn Dufurrena can't talk. A conversation is drowned out by the din of what sounds like a million children.

She'd love to talk about her Silver Pen Award honor, she says. "But could you call at 11:45, when we take a lunch break?"

Dufurrena is, yes, a writer, the Silver Pen honoree for her essays in Fifty Miles from Home that complement mother-in-law Linda Dufurrena's photographs. But she's also a primary schoolteacher in rural northern Nevada.

Kings River Elementary, where she teaches, is a two-room school, kindergarten through eighth grade, located "25 dirt miles from where I live," said Dufurrena. She teaches K through third, "but right now I don't have any third graders."

The 15-year veteran teacher acknowledges her job plays havoc on her writing. But who's to say a book might be there some day. "There is material here and I have kept a running journal," said the 49-year-old writer. "This place is its own little world."

Dufurrena's introduction to Nevada wasn't in a classroom but as a geologist. As a graduate student, she came to northern Nevada twice. Her first visit was to the Ruby Valley looking
for arrowheads with an archaeological survey crew. "I fell in love with Nevada that summer," she said.

On her second visit, she worked in a University of Nebraska summer field camp near Eureka. After graduate school, she was a geologist with Exxon and came to Nevada looking for uranium. She quit after three years: "I was not comfortable looking for uranium," she said. Dufurrena met her husband, Tim, in Denio. Their marriage, one of 22 years, going on 23, brought them to the Quinn River Ranch, which the Dufurrena family has owned for decades.

So how did a former geologist come to writing creative prose like the first sentence of Fifty Miles from Home: "Sometimes, on the right kind of morning, Nevada looks like waves frozen in rock."

With a combination of practice and courage. "I've always written," said Dufurrena. "But I never was brave enough to put it out there for the public. I thought you have to write fiction or some other obvious form."

Dufurrena's preference was essay writing, or as she describes it, "writing about things that never fall into an easy category." Things like marking lambs in the spring; the fluidity of a rock formation; the wildflower tapestry of a mountain meadow. "But I never believed other people would want to read that," she said.

Then, along came an editor who encouraged her, and the rest fell into place. After getting a piece published in Nevada magazine in 1984, Dufurrena was on her way. She started freelancing for Nevada Magazine and later for Range Magazine.

The text for Fifty Miles from Home began 15 years ago, tucked away in Dufurrena's journals filled with "vignettes, ramblings and campfire stories." As for the book's photographs, the majority is from Linda Dufurrena's vast work, spanning more than a decade. Collaborating with her mother-in-law isn't a first for Dufurrena. The two have worked together on many magazine articles, though this was the first time for a book. So the partnership was a natural.

"Linda has a huge bank of images, but wanted to flesh them out with stories of the place," said Dufurrena. "She asked me if we could put some of those images with the stories I had."

Sharing her thoughts in essay form about ranch life, family and Nevada's landscape – "things that strike a cord in me" – means a lot to Dufurrena. And receiving a Silver Pen Award for her
words makes it all the more meaningful.

"I'm so excited," she said. I'm really gratified people recognize what you do and honor it highly."

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Updated June 12, 2008