We have a new cadre of Oregon Book Award winners, the prized title bestowed upon the state's storytellers by letters-loving nonprofit Literary Arts. In addition to seven awards for works in specific genre categories, the organization also recognized the founders of two reading-focused efforts—Street Books and A Kids Co.—at a special ceremony Monday night.
Street Books founder Laura Moulton accepted the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award, which recognizes "significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s literary community." Moulton started out in 2011, with a RACC grant to fund a mobile library for people living outside, day laborers, and low-income residents. Over time, the little book carts pulled by cargo bikes have come to additionally carry social services resource guides, pamphlets and zines about legal rights, blankets, hygiene products, and harm-reduction supplies, like Narcan/naloxone and fentanyl test strips.Â
Jelani Memory, founder of A Kids Co., accepted the Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award to recognize his children's book company's contributions to young readers—publishing over 30 books on difficult / oft-avoided subjects like racism, menstruation, empathy, and self-harm, among others.
From 212 titles submitted to the 2025 awards for genre works, panels of out-of-state judges whittled down 35 finalists. The finalists and winners from each category are below. Literary Arts alternates its awards for published play scripts and graphic literature every other year, and 2025 is a year to recognize drama. Comics are back on the menu next year.
FICTION, Ken Kesey Award
Miriam Gershow, Survival Tips: Stories (Propeller Books)
Victor Lodato, Honey (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers)
WINNER: Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe (Knopf/Penguin Random House)
Charlie J. Stephens, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest (Torrey House Press)
Willy Vlautin, The Horse (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers)
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