This morning, Literary Arts announced the nominees for the 2013 Oregon Book Awards—it's a highlights reel of the last year in local literature, nonfiction, and poetry, with plenty of great suggestions if you're looking for some local reading material in the new year. (From a fiction standpoint, start with Shards and Glaciers, if you haven't read 'em yet.)
This year the ceremony will also feature a "readers' choice" award, where readers can vote for their favorite among the nominated books—so we might as well go ahead and hand that off to Cheryl Strayed now, yeah? (Wild was nominated in the "creative nonfiction" category, which is apparently a pleasant euphemism for "memoir.")
You'll notice that there's no graphic novel category this year—Literary Arts decided to make it a biannual award, so it'll be back next year.
It's also worth noting that one of the drama nominees—Susan Mach's A Noble Failure—opens this weekend at Third Rail.
Here are the fiction nominees:
Brian Doyle of Portland, Bin Laden's Bald Spot (Red Hen Press)
Ismet Prcic of Portland, Shards (Grove/Atlantic)
Carter Sickels of Portland, The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury)
Alexis Smith of Portland, Glaciers (Tin House Books)
Leni Zumas of Portland, The Listeners (Tin House Books)
The rest are after the jump!
STAFFORD/HALL AWARD FOR POETRY
Judge: Mary Jo Bang
Jean Esteve of Waldport, Off-Key (Finishing Line Press)
Toni Hanner of Eugene, Gertrude: Poems and Other Objects (Traprock Books)
Alan Peterson of Ashland, Fragile Acts (McSweeney's)
Zachary Schomburg of Portland, Fjords Vol 1 (Black Ocean)
Carrie Seitzinger of Portland, Fall Ill Medicine (Small Doggies Press)
ANGUS L. BOWMER AWARD FOR DRAMA
Judge: Lydia Diamond
Susan Mach of Portland, A Noble Failure
Steve Patterson of Portland, Immaterial Matters
Andrea Stolowitz of Portland, Antarktikos
Rich Rubin of Portland, Costa Rehab
C.S. Whitcomb of Wilsonville, Lear's Follies
FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION
Judge: Jennifer Michael Hecht
Nicholas Buccola of McMinnville, The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (NYU Press)
Kerry Cohen of Portland, Dirty Little Secrets: Breaking the Silence on Teenage Girls and Promiscuity (Sourcebooks)
Scott Farris of Portland, Almost President (Lyons Press)
Steven Green of Salem, The Bible, the School, and the Constitution (Oxford University Press)
Kent Hartman of Portland, The Wrecking Crew (St. Martin's Press)
SARAH WINNEMUCCA AWARD FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION
Judge: Luis Rodriguez
Kerry Cohen of Portland, Seeing Ezra (Seal Press)
Storm Large of Portland, Crazy Enough (Free Press)
Aria Minu-Sepehr of Corvallis, We Heard the Heavens Then (Free Press)
Cheryl Strayed of Portland, Wild (Knopf)
Ceiridwen Terrill of Portland, Part Wild (Scribner)
ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Judge: Margarita Engle
Heather Vogel Frederick of Portland, Once Upon a Toad (Simon & Schuster)
Deborah Hopkinson of West Linn, Annie and Helen (Random House Children's Books)
Graham Salisbury of Lake Oswego, Calvin Coconut: Man Trip (Random House Children's Books)
Allen Say of Portland, Drawing From Memory (Scholastic Press)
J.H. Shapiro of Portland, Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art (Charlesbridge)
LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Judge: Margarita Engle
Brian Doyle of Portland, Cat's Foot (Corby Books)
Katie Kacvinsky of Corvallis, First Comes Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Ruth Tenzer Feldman of Portland, Blue Thread (Ooligan Press)
