Here Are the Finalists for This Year’s Oregon Book Awards

If you're running out of pandemic reading material, we've got good news—Literary Arts has announced the 35 finalists for this year's Oregon Book Awards.

The nominees hail from Portland down to Ashland, in categories from young adult fiction to creative nonfiction and poetry.

There are plenty of familiar names: Deborah Hopkins, who won last year's Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children's Literature, has been nominated for two awards this year. And Verge, by three-time Oregon Book Award winner Lidia Yuknavitch, is up for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. But there are many newer names, too, including debut novelists Genevieve Hudson and Chelsea Bieker.

The winners will be announced Sunday, May 2, at 7 pm during a broadcast of OPB's The Archive Project.

Here's the full list:

Ken Kesey Award for Fiction

Chelsea Bieker of Portland, Godshot

Genevieve Hudson of Portland, Boys of Alabama

Mark Savage of Portland, Fictional Film Club

Vanessa Veselka of Portland, The Great Offshore Grounds

Lidia Yuknavitch of Milwaukie, Verge

Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry

Anna Elkins of Jacksonville, Hope of Stones

Eman Hassan of Portland, Raghead

Floyd Skloot of Portland, Far West: Poems

Ed Skoog of Portland, Travelers Leaving for the City

Joe Wilkins of McMinnville, Thieve

Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction

Edwin Battistella of Ashland, Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump

Nicholas Buccola of Portland, The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America

Kelsey Freeman of Bend, No Option but North: The Migrant World and the Perilous Path Across the Border

Joseph E. Taylor III of Portland, Persistent Callings: Seasons of Work and Identity on the Oregon Coast

Ann Vileisis of Port Orford, Abalone

Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction

Sierra Crane Murdoch of Hood River, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

Ruby McConnell of Eugene, Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life

David Oates of Portland, The Mountains of Paris

Melissa Matthewson of Ashland, Tracing the Desire Line: A Memoir in Essays

Ben Moon of Pacific City, Denali: A Man, a Dog, and the Friendship of a Lifetime

Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children's Literature

Susan Hill Long of Portland, Josie Bloom and the Emergency of Life

Deborah Hopkinson of West Linn, Butterflies Belong Here

Jody J. Little of Portland, Worse Than Weird

Jenn Reese of Portland, A Game of Fox and Squirrels

Elizabeth Rusch of Portland, Mario and the Hole in the Sky: How a Chemist Saved Our Planet

Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature

Nancy Richardson Fischer of Hood River, The Speed of Falling Objects

Deborah Hopkinson of West Linn, We Had to Be Brave

Kathryn Ormsbee of Eugene, The Sullivan Sisters

Erin Riha of Portland, But for the Mountains

Elizabeth Rusch of Portland, You Call THIS Democracy?: How to Fix Our Government and Deliver Power to the People

Angus Bowmer Award for Drama

Sara Jean Accuardi of Portland, The Delays

Conor Eifler of Portland, You Cannot Undo This Action

E.M. Lewis of Monitor, How the Light Gets In

Anya Pearson of Portland, The Measure of Innocence

Andrea Stolowitz of Portland, Recent Unsettling Events

Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award
PlayWrite, Inc. of Portland

The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award
Elizabeth Lyon of Eugene

C.E.S. Wood Award
Molly Gloss of Portland