There are so many poets and writers in these parts that it’s impossible to produce a comprehensive list of “the year in reading” for book-lovers, but several Yamhill County authors caught my eye in 2024. All these works may be found at local bookstores, including Third Street Books in McMinnville and Chapters Books and Coffee in Newberg, as well as at local libraries.

Not that one ever needs an excuse to buy books, but holiday shopping is upon us, so here’s your go-to justification for loading up. Plan ahead, in case a desired title is out of stock. The turnaround on deliveries for books ordered by locally owned stores is generally fast.

Two quick notes. I have interviewed two of these authors — Bethany Lee and Joe Wilkins — in the past, and the latter, in fact, was recently featured here in a chat with Amy Leona Havin, so the links to those stories are included.

Finally, with the exception of Hannah Grace Spenner’s poetry collection, I’ve not read these volumes yet. But I didn’t want that to stand in the way of giving local writers a shout-out for their labors this year. Here’s the list, which includes nonfiction, memoir, poetry, and fiction. A perfect gift pack!

The Entire Sky, by Joe Wilkins, published by Little, Brown and Company, 373 pages.

Wilkins’ stack of work continues to grow. Along with a memoir, several volumes of poetry, and the terrific novel Fall Back Down When I Die, he gave us another this year: The Entire Sky, in which “a troubled boy on the run, an aging rancher, and a woman at a crossroads … find unexpected solace and kinship in the family they make.” Wilkins brings a poetic sensibility to his prose fiction, producing stories that are both thrilling and poignant with sentences that will astonish you.

Close to the Surface: A Family Journey at Sea, by Bethany Lee, published by Fernwood Press, 375 pages.

When I first heard that this memoir was in the works, my admiration for the author’s courage soared. She and her family spent a year sailing the length of the western United States. “I didn’t expect becoming myself,” she begins, “would involve so much water.” Like Wilkins, Lee brings a poet’s eye and ear to all her writing; poet Kim Stafford’s blurb appears on the cover: “The horizon calls to pilgrims.” A blurb on Spenner’s website notes that as the pilgrim at sea, Lee sets out to “pull you into an inner journey, demonstrating how humans can unfurl and evolve in stunning ways when they’re taken out of the status quo and into a life of novelty and extremes.”

The Coracle and the Copper Bell: poems to carry skin and soul, by Bethany Lee, published by Fernwood Press, 154 pages.

With a cover design that echoes that of her memoir, Lee’s latest collection of poetry is billed as a companion piece to that work. The section titles also hint of a kinship with the other work: Casting Off, Sea Change, and Becoming Home. Her website includes a reader’s guide to the connections between the two works.

Illuminate Me: Poetry for Life’s Uncertainties, self-published by Hannah Grace Spenner.

Spenner is a McMinnville poet whose work I discovered this year at the library, and I’ve been returning to it frequently, as her poems seem right for the times. For a poetry collection, it’s a thick volume, containing more than 150 poems that touch on a huge range of topics: mental health, death, boundaries, violence, trauma, abuse, and suicide — all presented in the spirit of bringing “awareness, understanding and empathy.” The collection is dedicated to “those navigating life’s uncertainties.” 

Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life, by Nicolas D. Kristof, published by Knopf, 480 pages.

Kristof has worked almost continuously for The New York Times since 1984. Having grown up on a local farm, he got his start at the same newspaper where I spent nearly 20 years, The News-Register in McMinnville. That’s the departure point for a memoir that takes the reader from Yamhill County to the Tiananmen Square protest and massacre, Yemeni civil war, and the Darfur genocide in Sudan.