The annual Oregon Book Awards ceremony is always a bit of a lovefest for the state’s literary community. This year’s event, after 100 days of an administration not overly fond of authors, felt especially so.

Portland author Omar El Akkad, who hosted Monday night’s ceremony at Portland Center Stage at The Armory, said in his opening remarks that he hasn’t felt much like celebrating lately. But “more than any other moment in my life, right now I need to feel like I’m part of a community,” he said to applause.

The awards are conferred by the Portland nonprofit Literary Arts, whose executive director, Andrew Proctor, said the winners were chosen from among 212 entries from 40 towns. Each winner represented a literary category: fiction, poetry, general nonfiction, creative nonfiction, children’s literature, middle grade and young adult literature, and drama. 

Ken Kesey Award for Fiction

Kimberly King Parsons of Portland won for her novel We Were the Universe. It tells the story of a young woman caught between the rock of her grief for her dead sister and the hard place of parenting a preschooler. 

“This book is really filthy and really weird,” Parsons said. “I didn’t expect to win. And maybe the takeaway is write the weird thing and write a filthy thing.” 

Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry

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Charity E. Yoro of Portland won for her collection ten-cent flower & other territories. Yoro describes her poems as exploring what is lost in lineage, translation, and transaction, and exploring reclamation through mapping.

“This book could not exist in the world without the care of my community,” Yoro said. She also thanked El Akkad, saying his work has informed how she thinks about being a writer “and the responsibility that we have to continue to make meaning and build movements of liberation.”  

Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction

Rebecca Clarren of Portland won for her book The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance. She described it as an “entangled history of homesteaders and Native Americans.” Clarren grew up hearing numerous stories of her stalwart Jewish Midwestern ancestors, but no stories about the Lakota who first lived on her family’s land – an erasure that became the centerpiece of her book. 

“To write a book that is about debunking American myth, to have that book selected tonight, feels a little like hope,” Clarren said. 

Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction

Jaclyn Moyer of Corvallis won for On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family, from Punjab to California.

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Moyer thanked the “whole network of relationships and communities” that supported her during the years she worked on her book about identity, heritage, and how a rare strain of wheat brought them together for her. 

Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature

Anne Broyles of Portland won for her picture book biography I’m Gonna Paint: Ralph Fasanella, Artist of the People.

Broyles said she hadn’t heard of her subject until a 2014 magazine assignment that sent her to an exhibit of his paintings. She learned he was a voracious reader who grew up to be a union activist and then an artist whose works focused on everyday laborers.

“I just encourage all of us to be like Ralph Fasanella: to read books, create art, and tirelessly work for social justice,” Broyles said. 

Leslie Bradshaw Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature

Makiia Lucier of Portland won for her young adult fantasy Dragonfruit. Set in the South Pacific, it tells the story of a young woman who has a special tie to the sea dragons that roam around her island home.

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“When I was a kid, on Guam, there were no books with Pacific Islander main characters,” Lucier said. “We never saw ourselves going on a quest or riding on the backs of sea dragons or doing any of that fun stuff.” 

“Island kids, like all kids, deserve to see themselves reflected in their stories and to know that our stories and our histories, they matter,” Lucier said.

Angus L. Bowmer Award for Drama

Brianna Barrett of Portland won for her play Still Harvey Still. It tells the story of two long-estranged friends and their awkward reunion after one is diagnosed with cancer. 

Barrett paid tribute to the other finalists, saying, “Everyone in this category is someone I love, dearly,” and noting that nearly all of them have been part of the local collective LineStorm Playwrights. 

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Literary Arts presented special awards to two Portlanders for their literary impact.

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Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award

Laura Moulton started Street Books in 2011 as a social practice art project meant to last three months. Social practice art focuses on community engagement and impact. Moulton built a library-on-a-bike, took it to places where people living outside often gathered, and invited them to check out the books. The response persuaded her to keep Street Books going. Today, the nonprofit has nine employees and multiple bike-based libraries that also offer survival supplies to their patrons.

“We believe in the transformative capacity of books both for the individual and the collective,” Moulton said.

Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award

Jelani Memory founded the children’s media company A Kids Co. in 2019 with the goal of sharing challenging, empowering, important stories for children. Today, the company offers nearly 200 titles in English and Spanish. 

Memory said his superpower was being a father, and that’s the perspective he brings to his work. “I want that to be my legacy, that I got the opportunity to make these books so that I get to expand my scope as a father, just a little bit, to maybe touch some other grown-ups and some other kids,” he said.

The ceremony also included a tribute to the late Tom Spanbauer, a Portland author who taught and mentored numerous fellow writers. Portland author Lidia Yuknavitch, a longtime friend, read a passage from his work and offered a “Baltic sea witch prayer” in his honor.

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