Last night, Literary Arts announced the finalists for the 2011 Oregon Book Awards.

Willy Vlautin's Lean on Pete seems likely to win the fiction category, though I've not yet read Emily Chenoweth's Hello Goodbye, and I hear good things. (The fiction award is judged by Lydia Millet! Badass. Robert Pinsky judging poetry is pretty cool too.) I have not read nearly enough of the rest of the finalists to make any educated guesses, save to say that Tom Bissell is one of the savviest pop-culture commentators around, so I bet his Extra Lives will be tough to beat in the creative non-fiction category.

Finalists after the jump! Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Gerding Theater on Monday, April 25.

In other book news, the Morning News just announced the contenders for their 2011 Tournament of Books. It's a solid enough list—Aimee Bender, Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Paul Murray—and all nominated books are currently 30% off at Powell's, so you can follow along at home. I vote Aimee Bender. Because I have a totally unobjective author crush on Aimee Bender—one of the nicest, most generous writers I've ever had the privilege of interviewing. (Along with Sam Liypsyte, whose The Ask I am disappointed to not see in the tournament—I suppose it's time to accept that most people just did not love that book as much as I did, even though it is hilarious and great].)



2011 Oregon Book Award Finalists

KEN KESEY AWARD FOR FICTION
Judge: Lydia Millet

Emily Chenoweth of Portland, Hello Goodbye (Random House)
K.B. Dixon of Portland, A Painter's Life (Inkwater Press)
Jane Kirkpatrick of Moro, A Flickering Light (WaterBrook Press)
Scott Sadil of Hood River, Lost in Wyoming (Barclay Creek Press)
Willy Vlautin of Portland, Lean on Pete (Harper Perennial)

STAFFORD/HALL AWARD FOR POETRY
Judge: Robert Pinsky

David Biespiel of Portland, The Book of Men and Women
(University of Washington Press)
Donna Henderson of Monmouth, The Eddy Fence (Airlie Press)
Henry Hughes of Falls City, Moist Meridian (Mammoth Books)
Jennifer Richter of Corvallis, Threshold (Southern Illinois University Press)
Zachary Schomburg of Portland, Scary No Scary (Black Ocean)

FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION
Judge: Greg Grandin

Paul Collins of Portland, The Book of William (Bloomsbury)
Tom Krattenmaker of Portland, Onward Christian Athletes (Bowman & Littlefield)
Barry Sanders of Portland, Unsuspecting Souls (Counterpoint Press)
Barry Sanders of Portland, The Green Zone (AK Press)
Paul VanDevelder of Corvallis, Savages and Scoundrels (Yale University Press)

SARAH WINNEMUCCA AWARD FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION
Judge: Kyoko Mori

Carol Ann Bassett of Eugene, Galapagos at the Crossroads (National Geographic)
Tom Bissell of Portland, Extra Lives (Pantheon Books)
John Daniel of Elmira,The Far Corner (Counterpoint Press)
Lisa Ohlen Harris of Newberg, Through the Veil (Canonpress)
Kathleen Dean Moore of Corvallis, Wild Comfort (Trumpeter Books)

ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Judge: Kathi Appelt

Dale E. Basye of Portland, Rapacia:The Second Circle of Heck (Random House)
Dawn Babb Prochovnic of Portland, The Nest Where I Like to Rest (Magic Wagon)
Graham Salisbury of Lake Oswego, Calvin Coconut: The Zippy Fix (Wendy Lamb Books)
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen of Hines A Small Brown Dog with a Wet Pink Nose (Little Brown and Company)
Barbara Kerley of Portland, The Extraordinary Mark Twain (Scholastic Press)

LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Judge: Kathi Appelt

Scott William Carter of Salem, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys (Simon and Schuster)
Kerry Cohen Hoffman of Portland, It's Not You, It's Me (Random House)
Anne Osterlund of Ione, Academy 7 (Penguin Group)
L.K. Madigan of Portland, Flash Burnout (Houghton Mifflin)
Emily Whitman of Portland, Radiant Darkness (Greenwillow/Harper Collins)

ANGUS L. BOWMAN AWARD FOR DRAMA
Judge: Paula Cizmar

Marc Acito of Portland & C.S. Whitcomb of Wilsonville, Holidazed
Wayne Harrel of Portland, Second Bloom
Susan Mach of Portland, The Lost Boy
George Taylor of Beaverton, Good Citizen
Molly Best Tinsley of Ashland, Glacial Genes