In a recent podcast reflecting on 2025, book reviewers at The New York Times described the year in books as largely lackluster and lost, with deflated energy and a dearth of satisfying nonfiction. We’re here to tell you that in Oregon, not so much.

Yes, we had our travails. As in much of the country, libraries faced hurdles both fiscal and philosophical in the form of budget shortfalls and book challenges. A flagging economy hurt bookstores, including the monolithic Powell’s Books, which suffered a series of staff cuts. Orders by the Trump Administration that cut grants and fellowships affected local writers.

But generally, in the words of a former state slogan, things look different here. Oregon writers Willy Vlautin and Omar El Akkad won prestigious awards, with El Akkad taking home the National Book Award in Nonfiction. A visit by a poet was the largest public event hosted by the Sitka Center for Art + Ecology. And more than 8,500 people — a sellout crowd — attended the Portland Book Festival, on a sunny day in November. Nothing says reading is alive and well like long lines of readers, arms overflowing with volumes, waiting in bookseller queues.

Here is our look at the past year in books in Oregon. We’ve kept it brief; we know you want to get back to that new novel you received over the holidays.

Triumphs

March: Thalia Zepatos, a Portland writer and champion of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, receives the 2025 Soapstone Bread and Roses Award.

April: Kimberly King Parsons wins the Oregon Book Award for Fiction for We Were the Universe. Other award winners Charity E. Yoro in poetry, Rebecca Clarren in general nonfiction, Jaclyn Moyer in creative nonfiction, Anne Broyles in children’s literature, Makiia Lucier in middle grade and young adult literature, and Brianna Barrett in drama.

April: Portland novelist and musician Willy Vlautin is one of two winners of New Literary Project’s $50,000 Joyce Carol Oates Prize for a mid-career fiction writer.

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May: More than 200 people gathered in Newberg to hear writers read their work published in the 37^th annual Paper Gardens anthology. More than 400 area residents submitted work for the publication.
 

May: Poet Ada Limón visits the Nestucca K-8 School in Cloverdale in the largest public event hosted by the Sitka Center for Art + Ecology, and the last public appearance of her tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate. Her subject: the power of language and the natural world.

June: Gov. Tina Kotek signs into law Senate Bill 1098, which prohibits removing and banning books from school libraries for reasons exclusively based on the fact that their content includes a protected class.

October: Portland author Katherine Dunn’s collection of short stories, Near Flesh, is released, nine years after her death.

November: Portland Book Festival sells out for the first time, with more than 8,500 attendees. Headliners include Stacy Abrams, Jason De León, Emma Donoghue, Omar El Akkad, Susan Orlean, Patricia Smith, Jess Walter, Rebecca Yarros.

November: Omar El Akkad wins National Book Award in Nonfiction for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Karen Russell is a fiction finalist for The Antidote.

Travails

January: Portland writer Todd Grimson, who won an Oregon Book Award for his first novel, Within Normal Limits, in 1988, dies at age 73.

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March: President Trump signs an executive order calling for the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which provides grant funding to libraries and museums across the country. In December, the IMLS reinstated all grants, after a federal court ruled the executive order was unlawful.

September: Writers in Oregon and around the country are dismayed when the National Endowment for the Arts cancels its creative writing fellowships, carrying a $50,000 award. The announcement from the NEA cites a change in “grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the Administration.”

July-October: Powell’s Books in Portland lays off more than 30 employees in a series of staff cuts over the summer and fall, citing a slow recovery in sales following the pandemic.

December: Deschutes Public Library closes all its locations for four days after a cybersecurity attack. Library leaders are confident no confidential information was compromised. It the latest in a series of trying events for libraries around the state — including Grants Pass, John Day, and Coos Bay — coping with book challenges and lack of funding.

More 2025 in Review stories

• FilmWatch Weekly: The Best Films of 2025. From Sorry, Baby to The Secret Agent, Marc Mohan shares his picks for the year’s best movies.
• Visual Arts 2025: A look at the year that was. From the Portland Art Museum’s $116 million reinvigoration to a bevy of innovative exhibitions, it’s been a good art year in Oregon despite the Trump Administration’s war on arts and culture.
• Theater 2025: Frogs on the street, thrills and chills onstage. A year on the boards: Even costumed characters protesting in front of an ICE facility couldn’t upstage the stellar performances from Oregon’s theater community this year.
• Arts & politics 2025: Trump assaults top the year’s cultural news. The Trump Administration’s war on culture, DEI, and federal arts agencies has slashed money for arts groups across the nation, including Oregon, and is likely to continue.
• Oregon arts 2025: Comings and goings. Major shifts in leadership at All Classical Radio, Portland Art Museum, the state’s arts & cultural agencies, Eugene Ballet and many other groups made 2025 a year of realignment.
• Music 2025: The light shines in darkness. In a long, sometimes stressful, and often beautifully sounding year, the most important thing we do is talk to each other.
• In memorium: Arts figures we lost in 2025. From novelist Todd Grimson to actor Denis Arndt, painter Isaka Shamsud-Din, gallerist Donna Guardino, jazz vocalist Nancy King, singer/songwriter Jack McMahon and more, remembering Oregon artists who died in 2025.
• DanceWatch: Looking back and ahead. Jamuna Chiarini spotlights leading dance events coming up in January and looks back on highlights, changes, and significant events in the Oregon dance world in 2025.
• A last look at 2025 (and a peek into ’26). It’s been a year of highs and lows, from the Oregon Symphony jamming with the Dandy Warhols and the Portland Art Museum reinvigorating itself to the closing of the Five Oaks Museum and the federal administration’s fiscal war on arts. Time for 2026 to step up and take over!