Anna M. Nogar’s book, Quill and Cross in the Borderlands: Sor María de Ágreda and the Lady in Blue, 1628 to the Present, received two awards from the 2020 International Latino Book Awards: first place in the Best History Book category and first place in the Best Religious Book category. The International Latino Book Awards are the largest Latino cultural awards in the U.S. This year there were 297 winners in 96 categories. During the past two decades, the International Latino Book Awards have honored the extraordinary work of 3,194 authors and publishers. The size of the Awards is proof that books by and about Latinos are in high demand. In 2020 Latinos will purchase over $750 million in books in English and Spanish. This year the Awards Ceremony was held virtually on September 12, 2020, via YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, and the www.LatinoBookAwards.org website. The audience for the free event registered in the thousands.
Nogar’s Quill and Cross in the Borderlands achieves the difficult balance between academic rigor and readability. The book examines nearly four hundred years of history, folklore, literature, and art concerning the seventeenth-century Spanish nun and writer Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, identified as the legendary “Lady in Blue” who miraculously appeared to tribes in colonial-era New Mexico and taught them the rudiments of the Catholic faith. Sor María, an author of mystical Marian works, became renowned not only for her alleged spiritual travel from her cloister in Spain to the New World, but also for her writing, studied and implemented by Franciscans on both sides of the ocean. Nogar’s book looks at Ágreda’s life, writings, and apparitions, clearly documenting her significance to the history and colonization of New Spain’s northern frontier.
Anna M. Nogar is an associate professor of Hispanic Southwest studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico.
For more information, contact Kathryn Pitts at pitts.5@nd.edu or (574) 631-3267.