The 2026 Oregon Book Award Nominations Are Here

We won’t know who won this year’s Oregon Book Awards until April—but we can start speculating (and reading the nominated books) right now.

Literary Arts, the arts nonprofit devoted to supporting Oregon writers and readers, released the list of nominees for the Oregon Book Awards Monday morning. Winners will be announced in April at a live ceremony hosted by Kimberly King Parsons.

This year’s nominees include a sober study of spiraling housing costs in central Oregon, a memoir of drug abuse that WW contributor Jamie Cattanach counted among her favorite books of 2025 and a children’s book about learning to love a stray cat. It also includes Lidia Yuknavitch’s second memoir, Reading the Waves; her first, The Chronology of Water, was adapted into a critically acclaimed film in 2025.

“The finalists include debut authors as well as long- standing authors familiar to many readers. From intimate explorations of identity and belonging to reimaginings of history and place, these literary works demonstrate the many ways Oregon’s authors grapple with the questions and challenges of our time,” Susan Moore, director of programs for writers at Literary Arts, in a press release issued by the organization, said in a press release announcing the finalists. The themes woven throughout the finalists’ work — resilience, community, memory and transformation — remind us how vital literature is to understanding both our lived experience and the world around us.”

Finalists were selected by panels of out-of-state judges from more than 200 submitted titles. This year’s list of finalists—including the nominees for graphic literature, an award that is only issued on a biennial basis—are as follows.

Ken Kesey Award for Fiction (judged by Laird Hunt, Isle McElroy and Tara Kerr Roberts)

• Olufunke Grace Bankole of Portland, The Edge of Water (Tin House)
• Ling Ling Huang of Portland, Immaculate Conception: A Novel (Dutton)
• Kevin Maloney of Portland, Horse Girl Fever (Clash Books)
• Madeline McDonnell of Corvallis, Lonesome Ballroom (Rescue Press)
• Karen Thompson Walker of Portland, The Strange Case of Jane O. (Random House)

Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry (judged by Sumita Chakraborty, Timothy Donnelly and Jenny Molberg)

• H. G. Dierdorff of Portland, Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter (University of Nevada Press)
• Garrett Hongo of Eugene, Ocean of Clouds (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Jennifer Perrine of Portland, Beautiful Outlaw (Kelsey Street Press)
• Lisa Wells of Portland, The Fire Passage (Four Way Books)
• Joe Wilkins of McMinnville, Pastoral, 1994 (River River Books)

Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction (judged by Lucas Bessire, Evan Hughes and Shahnaz Habib)

• Jonathan Bach of Tigard, High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the

American West (Oregon State University Press)

• Rebecca Grant of Portland, Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom (Avid Reader Press)
• M. L. Herring of Corvallis, Born of Fire and Rain: Journey into a Pacific Coastal Forest (Yale University Press)
• Jamie Mustard of Portland, Child X: A Memoir of Slavery, Poverty, Celebrity, and Scientology (BenBella Books)
• Leah Sottile of Portland, Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age (Hachette Book Group/Grand Central Publishing)

Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction (judged by Deborah Jackson Taffa, Joseph Earl Thomas and Meline Toumani)

• Judith Barrington of Portland, Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs (Oregon State University Press)
• Karleigh Frisbie Brogan of Portland, Holding: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts (Steerforth)
• Justin Hocking of Portland, A Field Guide to the Subterranean: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and Our Deepest Selves (Counterpoint Press/Catapult Book Group)
• Wayne Scott of Portland, The Maps They Gave Us: One Marriage Reimagined (Black Lawrence Press)
• Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland, Reading the Waves (Riverhead Books)

Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature (judged by Bonny Becker, Lauren Rizzuto and Benson Shum)

• Zoey Abbott of Portland, This Year, a Witch! (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Simon & Schuster)
• Michelle Sumovich of Portland, I Have Three Cats… (Penguin Random House)
• A.A. Livingston of Lake Oswego, Grizelda the Green Hates Halloween (Flamingo
• Books/Penguin Random House)
• Elizabeth Rusch of Portland, All About Patterns (Charlesbridge)
• Kerilynn Wilson of Oregon City, A Monstrous Bedtime (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins)

Leslie Bradshaw Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature (judged by Evan Griffith, Jewell Parker Rhodes and Corey Ann Haydu)

• Waka T. Brown of West Linn, Rick Kotani’s 400 Million Dollar Summer (Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• Courtney Gould of Salem, What the Woods Took: A Novel (Wednesday Books)
• Rosanne Parry of Portland, A Wolf Called Fire (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins)
• Sara Ryan of Portland, Mountain Upside Down (Dutton Books for Young Readers)
• Shana Targosz of Portland, River of Spirits (The Underwild #1) (Aladdin Books/Simon & Schuster)

Award for Graphic Literature (judged by Kiku Hughes, Tessa Hulls and Joshua Neufeld)

• Breena Bard of Portland, Wildfire (Little, Brown Ink)
• Steven Christian of Portland, Welcome To Iltopia: An Eyelnd Feevr Augmented Reality
• Experience (Iltopia Studios)
• Rowan Kingsbury of Portland, Avery and the Fairy Circle (Flying Eye Books)
• Aron Nels Steinke of Portland, Speechless (Graphix/Scholastic)
• David F. Walker of Portland, Big Jim and the White Boy (Ten Speed Graphic)

SEE IT: The Oregon Book Awards, 7:30–9 pm, Portland Center Stage at The Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave., literary-arts.org, $15-$65.