Kirk Receives Booker Worthen Literary Prize for Winthrop Rockefeller Biography
Dr. John Kirk, George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History at UA Little Rock, has received the 2024 Booker Worthen Literary Prize from the Central Arkansas Library System for his 2022 biography, “Winthrop Rockefeller: From New Yorker to Arkansawyer, 1912-1956.”
“The Worthen Prize is a venerable Arkansas tradition, and I join a distinguished list of recipients that includes former governor Sid McMath; Morris Arnold, a senior judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals; Mara Leveritt, an investigative journalist; and Kevin Brockmeier, a novelist and short story writer, among many others,” Kirk said. “UA Little Rock’s History Department has also provided past Worthen Prize winners in former Department Chair S. Charles Bolton and former faculty member Elizabeth Jacoway.”
The Booker Worthen Literary Prize is awarded each year to the best work, fiction or nonfiction, by an author living in Arkansas and has a three-year period of eligibility. The award comes with a $2,000 prize, which Kirk said he will use to help pay for his daughter’s college tuition.
Kirk’s biography represents the culmination of 12 years of research. It investigates why Rockefeller, scion of one of the most powerful families in American history, left New York to move to an Arkansas mountaintop in the 1950s. The book covers Rockefeller’s childhood and education, his rise in the oil industry, his military service during World War II, and his family. Kirk tied Rockefeller’s New York life to his later work in his adopted state, where his legacy continues to be felt more than half a century after his governorship.
“The book shines an important light on the former Arkansas governor before he came to the state and the events that shaped him,” Kirk said. “It examines his family background, childhood, and education; his rise in the oil industry from roustabout to junior executive; his military service in the Pacific during World War II, including his involvement in the battles of Guam, Leyte, and Okinawa; his postwar work in race relations, health, education, and philanthropy; his marriage to and divorce from Barbara “Bobo” Sears; and the birth of his only child, future Arkansas lieutenant governor Win Paul Rockefeller.”
The Booker Worthen Literary Prize was established in 1999 in the memory of William Booker Worthen, who was a member of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) Board of Trustees for 22 years, as well as part of the Worthen Bank empire. The award is funded in part by interest from an endowment for the award donated by the Worthen family.
“I am very grateful to the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York, for naming me its inaugural Scholar-in-Residence and for providing me with further research funding and support to make the book possible,” Kirk said. “I am also grateful to the Central Arkansas Library System’s Butler Center for Arkansas Studies for selecting the book as the 2024 Worthen Prize winner, and to the Arkansas Historical Association for selecting the book as the 2024 J. G. Ragsdale Book Award winner.”
