Core Awards & President's Program Featuring Gwen Westerman

CHICAGO—Join Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures on Saturday, June 28, from 2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET during ALA Annual 2025 in Philadelphia, PA for a celebration of Core Award winners immediately followed by the Core President's Program.

The Awards presentation will recognize the winners of the 2025 Margaret Mann Citation, Core Larew Memorial Scholarship, Core LIFT Award, and Core Presidential Citations.

The President’s Program will feature Gwen Westerman, current Minnesota Poet Laureate, scholar and artist. Gwen Westerman’s Dakota roots are deep in this landscape of the tall grass prairie and reveal themselves in her art and writing through the languages and traditions of her family. She is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate, her father’s people, and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, her mother’s people. She is the co-author of Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota which won a 2013 Minnesota Book Award, and a 2014 Hognander Minnesota History Award.

Dr. Gwen Westerman holds her BA and MA in English from Oklahoma State University, and PhD in English from the University of Kansas. Her dissertation was focused on bridging the gap between designers and users in computer-human interaction. She teaches American and Native Nations literatures, Technical Communication, and Humanities to undergraduate and graduate students at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She received the Douglas R. Moore Faculty Research Award for her work on Dakota history and language and is a Distinguished Faculty Scholar in recognition of her work as a scholar, poet, and artist.

A three-time recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Gwen creates incredible textile art influenced by her life and Indigenous cultures. Since 2005, she has been creating quilts that have won awards at the juried shows of the Northern Plains Indian Art Market in Sioux Falls, the Eiteljorg Indian Art Market in Indianapolis, and the Heard Museum Guild Indian Art Fair & Market in Phoenix. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Red Cloud Heritage Center Museum in Pine Ridge, the University Art Galleries at the University of South Dakota, the Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul.

Gwen's poems, essays, and short stories appear in numerous publications, including the Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020); the Minnesota issue of Quiltfolk (January 2020); and New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press, 2018). Her poetry collection Follow the Blackbirds (2013) was published by Michigan State University Press.

Visit the ALA Annual 2025 conference site for more information on Core's Annual preconferences, special events and programs.

This program is sponsored by Core 2025 Annual Events Diamond Sponsor, OCLC.

About Core

Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures is the national association that advances the profession of librarians and information providers in central roles of leadership and management, collections and technical services, and technology. Our mission is to cultivate and amplify the collective expertise of library workers in core functions through community building, advocacy, and learning. Core is a division of the American Library Association. Follow us on our Blog, Instagram and LinkedIn.