Kathleen Condray, a professor of German at the University of Arkansas, is the 2021 recipient of the Booker Worthen Literary Prize from the Central Arkansas Library System. Professor Condray was chosen for her book, Das Arkansas Echo: A Year in the Life of Germans in the Nineteenth-Century South (University of Arkansas Press, 2020), which offers a fresh perspective on the German speakers who settled in Arkansas. Mining the archive of the German-language newspaper Das Arkansas Echo, Dr. Condray sheds light on how these immigrants navigated their new identity as southern Americans.
“I am honored to be the 2021 Worthen Literary Prize award winner, and I thank the committee, the Worthen family and CALS. It has been a rare privilege to explore the lives of German-speaking immigrants to Arkansas in their own words, especially since they were so adamant about passing their language to their children and grandchildren,” Dr. Condray said. “They were convinced they could help enrich the state of Arkansas because of the culture and values they brought with them. I hope we current Arkansans can continue to appreciate all that immigrants and other newcomers to the state have to offer.”
Dr. Condray joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1999. She is a 1994 graduate of the University of Arkansas, where she majored in German. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in German from the University of Illinois.