Tennis might have a way to go to replace hockey as Latvia’s favorite sport, but now that 19-year-old Ernests Gulbis has reached the quarterfinals of the French Open, the game could well have a higher profile.

Gulbis will face Serbia’s Novak Djokovic on June 3 in the men’s singles quarterfinals. The two players are longtime friends, according to media reports, since the days they trained at a tennis academy in Munich, Germany.

Djokovic is ranked third in singles play, while Gulbis is way back at 80th.

In a victory that surprised tennis fans and sports journalists, Gulbis on June 1 defeated France’s Michael Llodra to advance to the elite eight of one of the premier events in tennis. Gulbis is the first Latvian to reach the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament. (The other Grand Slam tournaments are the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.) Last year, Gulbis reached the fourth round of the U.S. Open.

Gulbis turned professional in 2004, according to his profile on the official Web site of the French Open. The right-hander has earned USD 461,485 so far, including USD 100,560 this year alone.

Two books about Latvia have won this year’s book prize from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, which concluded its 21st biennial conference May 31 at Indiana University in Bloomington.

The winnng titles are Nature and National Identity After Communism: Globalizing the Ethnoscape by Katrina Z. S. Schwartz and From Sites of Occupation to Symbols of Multiculturalism: Re-Conceptualizing Minority Education in Post-Soviet Latvia by Iveta Silova.

Schwartz is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida. Her book was published in 2006 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The work “examines the intersection of environmental politics, globalization, and national identity in a small East European country: modern-day Latvia,” according to the publisher.

Schwartz previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and taught at Penn State University.

Silova’s book was published in 2006 by Information Age Publishing Inc. The book “investigates a puzzle: how is it that one and the same system, the system of separate schooling for Latvian and Russian speakers, is seen as a site of occupation during one period (1987-1990) and as a symbol of multiculturalism in the next (1991-1999),” according to the publisher.

At the time she wrote the book, Silova was a visiting professor at Baku State University in Azerbaidjan. She now is an assistant professor of international and comparative education at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Honorable mention was awarded to Jeff Johnson for his The New Theatre of the Baltics: From Soviet to Western Influence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, published in 2007 by McFarland & Company. Johnson teaches at Brevard Community College in Florida.

The American Latvian Association is now accepting nominations for its annual awards of recognition for outstanding achievements in social and cultural work, the association announced May 28. The awards may go to organizations or individuals.

Nominations are due by Aug. 24 and will be reviewed by the association’s board during its September meeting. Awards traditionally are announced during local November 18 celebrations, according to Sarma Muižniece Liepiņa, head of the ALA’s office of cultural affairs.

Nominations should include detailed information about the candidate’s work and achievements, length of service and their meaning to the Latvian community. Awards are given for community leadership; for development of new and successful activities; for creativity in and maintenance of Latvian culture; for promotion of the survival of the Latvian people, and for popularizing Latvian culture and history to non-Latvians.

Nominations should be mailed to Sarma Muižniece Liepiņa, Director of the ALA Office of Cultural Affairs, 27 Highland Road, Boxford, MA 01921. Nominations also may be e-mailed to her at sarmaliepins@comcast.net. For further information, contact Muižniece Liepiņa at +1 (978) 352-6328, call the ALA office in Maryland at +1 (301) 340-1914, or visit the ALA’s Web site at www.alausa.org.

The ALA award of recognition may be earned just once in a person’s lifetime. A total of 33 awards were given in 2007. A list of previous winners is available on the ALA Web site, although Muižniece Liepiņa noted that some names may be missing. She asked that if someone knows a name is missing from the list that the ALA be contacted.