 The 2020 Nebraska Book Awards will honor authors and publishers of books with a Nebraska connection published in 2019. Winning the award for non-fiction investigative journalism is a book which is the true story of small-town politics and community perseverance and of decent people and questionable choices. Zoo Nebraska, Dismantling of an American Dream by Carson Vaughn, published by Little A. My name is Carson Vaughn and I'm a freelance writer, journalist and author from Broken Bow, Nebraska. In the summer of 2009, I was driving down Highway 20 in Northeast Nebraska with my girlfriend and her mother when we passed through a royal, a town of maybe 70 people. At the time Northeast Nebraska was a corner of the state I knew relatively little about, and so you might imagine my surprise when they casually pointed to a few rusty old corn cribs on the edge of town and started talking about the shooting of three chimpanzees, a defunct roadside zoo, and some vague connection to Johnny Carson. Little did I know, I would spend the next decade piecing the full story back together. When I first began my reporting on Royal and Zoo Nebraska, I was a 21-year-old journalism student at UNL. When I finished, I was a 31-year-old full-time freelancer. In between, I completed a three-year MFA program in North Carolina, served as the nonfiction editor of the Ecotown Literary Journal, got married, got a dog, traveled the country for a year with said wife and said dog in a renovated camper trailer, served as communications director for a U.S. Senate campaign, interviewed a neo-Nazi for the Guardian, covered the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for the New Yorker, filed dozens of stories for dozens of other publications, some that I've been dreaming about since I was a kid, and so much more. But never once in all that time was I able to shake the feeling that this tiny community in Northeast Nebraska and the roadside zoo that kept it on the map might reveal a valuable lesson not just about life in rural America or life in Nebraska, but the basic fundamentals of being human, lessons about dreaming big and falling short, about pettiness and pride and perseverance, lessons about community, or perhaps a lack thereof. It was my hope from the beginning that if I drilled deep enough into the bedrock of this community, I might tap into some of those universal themes that everyone can relate to. Or as Murray Santos put it, If you know and understand the story of your community, you will know and understand a great deal about the story of man anywhere. I like to think that receiving a Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction is at least partial recognition of that goal. And for that, I'm deeply grateful to the Nebraska Center for the Book and the Nebraska Library Commission. I'd also like to thank my parents, Mary and Jerry Vaughn, for their unwavering support of my work. I'd like to thank my wife, Mel Delman, for being my first reader and toughest editor. And last but certainly not least, the citizens of Royal Nebraska and the many real characters in this book for sharing your story with me. Congrats to all the other winners of this year's Nebraska Book Awards. And with that, I'll turn it over to the next presenter. Thank you. Winning for nonfiction, Nature Reference Book is a book which explores the history, geography, and geology of the plains and the birds that inhabit it. Great Plains Birds, Discover the Great Plains by Larkin Powell, published by Bison Books. I am Larkin Powell, professor at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And I want to thank the selection committee for the recognition for Great Plains Birds. Of course, I'm also grateful to the University of Nebraska Press and to Bison Books for their wonderful support during the writing and production process. This book is unique as it's part of a series of books on the Great Plains, which includes some previous winners of this award. Rick Edwards and Katie Nieland in UNL's Center for Great Plains Studies are responsible for the idea for the series, and they were my first contacts and a constant source of feedback for the content and the direction that I took. Katie is also responsible for the beautiful cover art. Great Plains Birds is not a bird identification book. Rather, it's an opportunity for me to share stories about the birds that live in our region. And even those that migrate through and thrill us with clouds of avian diversity in the spring and fall. I hope readers of the book will see why the Great Plains is a unique place to search for birds. And even more, I hope that readers will see how our birds are a link to understanding our culture and our society. Very simply, how we use our landscapes affects birds, and we notice the presence or absence of birds around us. This book is also about little experiences in our lives that are facilitated by birds. And I'll end with this short reading about how birds help define sacred spaces on the plains. As the book begins, I share a story about a trip during my freshman year of college for which my father effectively kidnapped me from other possibilities that I had for a spring break. He took me from Iowa to Nebraska to see the St. Hill Crane migration. And we went to a blind in the morning and we watched the river and the cranes wake up and fly into the sky. Those two moments, the initial view of huddled gray forms in the twilight and bursts of flight into the sun are the money makers for the guides at the viewing blind. Those spectacular moments are why I return to the same river today with my family and friends. And those moments are why I soon forgot about my friends on the slopes of Colorado and the beaches of Texas on that crisp March morning in 1987. Only later did I learn that this display is one of the greatest secrets of the plains. Indeed, wildlife experts from around the world flock to the plat, while many Nebraskans and Great Plains residents will tell you that they have never taken the time to go see the cranes. As you explore the Great Plains, I invite you to plan for moments like this. Discover sacred places away from the bustle of humanity. Feel the power of nature under a flock of whirling snow geese or allow a western meadowlark to serenade you on a sunny, prairie slope. The Great Plains is a wonderful place to find surprises to call your own. The birds have stories to tell and some of those stories can be found in the pages of this book. But there are other stories that only the birds can tell you and the birds are out there waiting for you. Again, my thanks to the Nebraska Library Commission and I hope everyone can enjoy the birds and landscapes around you this week.