Literary Arts doled out its Oregon Book Awards this week, and Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children won both the Ken Kesey Award for fiction and the Readers Choice Award. Here’s what Suzette Smith wrote in her review of that book for the Mercury:
Yuknavitch’s writing style works in absolutes and blanket statements like large swaths of color on a canvas. There were moments where mentions of Jim Morrison or Balvenie scotch almost ejected me from the book altogether, but I stayed with it and realized Yuknavitch wasn’t saying clichéd things just to seem cool. She was saying them to be bare and vulnerable and known, like crying in front of a friend for the first time.
Awards also went to books by Portlanders Carl Adamshick, Barbara Kerley, David Biespiel, Kate Carroll de Gutes, Ariel Cohn, and Doug Spangle. Full list of winners after the jump.
ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Barbara Kerley of Portland
With a Friend by Your Side (National Geographic Society)LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Brian Doyle of Lake Oswego
Martin Marten (St. Martin’s Press)FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION
David Biespiel of Portland
A Long High Whistle (Antilever Press)SARAH WINNEMUCCA AWARD FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION
Kate Carroll de Gutes of Portland
Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear (Ovenbird Books)AWARD FOR GRAPHIC LITERATURE
Ariel Cohn and Aron Nels Steinke of Portland
The Zoo Box (First Second Books)STAFFORD/HALL AWARD FOR POETRY
Carl Adamshick of Portland
Saint Friend (McSweeney’s)KEN KESEY AWARD FOR FICTION
Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland
The Small Backs of Children (HarperCollins)READERS CHOICE AWARD
Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland
The Small Backs of Children (HarperCollins)SPECIAL AWARDS:
STEWART H. HOLBROOK LITERARY LEGACY AWARD
Doug Spangle of PortlandWALT MOREY YOUNG READERS LITERARY LEGACY AWARD
Curtis Kiefer of Philomath