Richard Manning received the first Richard J. Margolis Award for a lyrical account of his experience building a log cabin with his wife in the Montana wilderness, work that later appeared in his second book, A Good House (Grove Press). He has continued to write regularly about the social, political and environmental threats to America's West, winning numerous awards along the way, including the Montana Audubon Society Award for environmental reporting and the C.B. Blethen Award for investigative journalism. His other books include Last Stand (Penguin), an examination of the logging industry, and Grassland (Viking), an exploration of the destruction and recovery of the prairie ecosystem.

Manning's latest book, One Round River: The Curse of Gold and the Fight for the Big Blackfoot (Henry Holt) was published in January, 1998. For many years, Manning made his home on the Blackfoot, the river immortalized in Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It, and has lived through the slow but inexorable degradation of this once beautiful river. In this book he explores the impact of mining, development and adventure tourism, not just on the river but on an entire way of life. "It is Manning's special talent," said Kirkus Reviews, "to raise landscapes--grasslands, headwaters--to exalted status through prose that is ardent and uncompromising."

"Winning the Margolis Award came at a time when I was living on magazine work and credit cards," Manning said recently. "It meant a great deal to me because it was the first national award that I'd gotten and it kind of signaled that I was going in the right direction."

Manning, who is now working on a book on the salmon industry and another project on international agriculture, lives with his wife in Astoria, Oregon, but will soon return to live in that same log cabin they built in Lol, Montana.