Nominate an Outstanding Western Artist for an Award

Know someone whose 2025 work deserves recognition? Nominate them for one or more of the 71 awards offered by the Academy of Western Artists. Our revised award process allows anyone to nominate. The Academy will reach out to all nominees to request submissions of information for consideration (voting and judging). Completed submissions and Academy professional membership are required in order for a nomination to move forward to the voting stage.

Self-nomination is allowed, and anyone who submitted information for 2025 work under our former process will be considered to have self-nominated.

Candy Moulton, author & film producer

Candy Moulton is passionate about the stories of the American West and she has been telling them for decades. She is the author of 17 books of Western history and has produced dozens of films for museums, visitor centers, and organizations (from the Oregon-California Trails Association and Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame to Western Writers of America). She is the former Executive Director of Western Writers of America, the current Executive Director of the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame, and a full-time freelance writer and film producer.

Her book Chief Joseph: Guardian of the People won the WWA Spur Award for Best Biography in 2006, and Sacajawea: Mystery, Myth and Legend won the same award in 2023. In Pursuit of a Dream, a documentary produced for the Oregon-California Trails Association, won the Spur Award for Best Documentary in 2010. The Battle of Red Buttes, written by Candy with Bob Noll for the National Historic Trail Interpretive Center in Casper, Wyoming, won the Spur Award for Best Documentary in 2021.

Her newest works are two films. Land of Abundance: Native Lifeways in Grand Encampment is a short documentary for the Grand Encampment Museum, which shown regularly at the museum and has been picked up by two film festivals. Legacy of a Nation: Journeys to Carbon County, Wyoming was developed for the America 250 celebration. The film has screened on Wyoming PBS and at theater and special event showings throughout Carbon County. She is working on new exhibits for the American Quarter Horse Museum in Amarillo, Texas.

Zach Martinez, cowboy musician

Zach Martinez is a Utah-based cowboy musician and western songwriter who writes and performs original western music along with classic cowboy songs, drawing from a lifetime spent horseback and immersed in the traditions of the West. He is currently working on a solo project of original western music and a duo project with Utah poet Dakota Holdaway, with whom he writes and performs regularly. His album Outrider was released in 2024.

He performed at the 40th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko (2025), and is a part of the committee that runs the Juab Cowboy Poetry Gathering every year in Nephi, Utah.