Last minute gift guide: 2024 Oregon Book Award winners’ favorite books for holiday giving

Josephine Woolington, Waka T. Brown, Nora Ericson, and Daniela Molnar offer suggestions ranging from picture books, to poetry, to a monthly letter of romantic, erotic stories.

The holidays are just around the corner, and if you still need to find the perfect present for friends and family, 2024 Oregon Book Award winners are here to help. This year, prize recipients in categories including nonfiction, middle grade, poetry, and others, have offered their favorite literary recommendations for gifts. From regional histories and poetry to children’s stories and romance, there’s something for everyone on your list.

Josephine Woolington received the 2024 Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction.

Josephine Woolington, writer, musician, educator, and author of Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest, received the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction. She recommends Dream of Xibalba, a dreamy, incantatory long poem by Stephanie Adams-Santos; Tribal Histories of the Willamette Valley, an account of Oregon history through the stories of the Indigenous peoples of the Willamette Valley, by David G. Lewis; Nevada, a road-trip novel by Imogen Binnie that The Atlantic earlier this year included on its list of the Great American Novels; and Fire Exit, a story of family, legacy, culture, and inheritance by award-winning author Morgan Talty.

Waka T. Brown has twice won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult & Middle Grade Literature.

Waka T. Brown, award-winning children’s book author and screenplay writer, won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult & Middle Grade Literature for The Very Unfortunate Wish of Melony Yoshimura. She recommends giving No Matter the Distance, by Portland-area author Cindy Baldwin, a verse novel about a girl with cystic fibrosis and her relationship with a dolphin. Brown told me she greatly admires novel writers who can also write poetry. 

“Speaking of poetry,” she continued over email, “I’d like to recommend the self-published poetry chapbooks of my good friend John C. Vincent. My favorite one is Man Love, which is a memoir-like collection of poems that offer a glimpse into what it was like to grow up in a mostly male family on a small Kansas farm. He has others, including Early Application for my Next Life, The Clarity and the Fog, and Pattern and Form. They’re very short, so all of his books together would make a great gift bundle for anyone who likes poetry.”

Brown also suggests Kate Chenli’s A Bright Heart, a young adult fantasy that she considers a good read for anyone who likes a book that is hard to put down. With a sequel scheduled to publish in June 2025, Brown considers it a good gift that offers something additional to look forward to.

Children’s book author Nora Ericson received the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Children’s Literature.

Children’s book author Nora Ericson received the Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature for her picture book Too Early. For younger children, her recommendations include Frostfire by Elly MacKay and Bedtime for Bo by Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold, illustrated by Mari Kanstad Johnsen.

Frostfire is a deliciously wintery tale that would make a great gift for the season,” she said. “The adorable foxes, sweet story, and beautiful snowy scenes made from cut paper give this book a charming, slightly vintage, joy. It could definitely inspire some holiday paper-doll-making for added fun.”

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Bedtime for Bo is a few years old and translated from the original Norwegian, but is available in the U.S. and could be ordered by any local store,” Ericson said. “It’s a sweet bedtime story about an imaginative child and a very patient mom, but what sets it apart is its absolutely glorious illustrations, just bursting with color.”

For older kids into nonfiction, Ericson says it’s hard to beat the new Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders by Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer — a dense and encyclopedic book “chock-full of wows.”

Lastly, Ericson offers a bonus suggestion strictly for adults: The Sapphire Letters by Portland romance author Grant Gosch. The series offers a fun subscription to receive monthly romantic, erotic stories delivered as old-fashioned letters by mail.

Daniela Molnar won the 2024 Oregon Book Award’s Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry for “CHORUS.”

Daniela Molnar, artist, poet, pigment worker, and author of the poetry collection CHORUS, received the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. She recommends poetry volumes Inner Verses by Pam Rehm, A Library of Light by Danielle Vogel, and Poem Bitten by a Man by Brian Teare.

“All of these books are new this year,” Daniela wrote. “Inner Verses is composed of short, apparently simple, apparently quiet lines that unfold like birdsong. Rehm is fascinated by the depths of what often goes unnoticed and the ways our perception can shape the world. A Library of Light is the third book in a decade-long trilogy exploring the ways that language is a healing medium. Vogel is a poet like no other. As an herbalist, ceremonialist, and visual artist, she thinks across mediums — the otherworldly scope of her passions is alchemized in spacious, enchanted, enchanting lines. Then, Poem Bitten by a Man is an homage to several visual artists — Agnes Martin and Jasper Johns, primarily — as well as an exploration of illness, healing, and queer love. Teare’s sensitivity to form and the splayed freeness of his mind are a powerful, luminous combination.”

Molnar continues with poetry-related prose suggestions for more adventurous readers with The Beauty of Light: Interviews by Etel Adnan and Laure Adler, and translated by Ethan Mitchell; Story of a Poem by Matthew Zapruder, and Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene edited by Linda Russo and Marthe Reed.

Molnar continues, “All three of these books offer paths into poems for people who may not think they like poetry. The Beauty of Light is a series of interviews with the poet and painter Etel Adnan near the end of her long, extraordinary life. She is generous with her wisdom, and she’s also funny and frank.” Zapruder’s Story of a Poem “is about what it’s like to write a poem while also juggling the multiple roles we all inhabit on a daily basis — it demystifies the process without killing its real magic.” Finally, Molnar offers Counter-Desecration, which she calls “an all-time favorite of mine published years ago but still in my daily rotation. It’s about how language changes and how language can change the world.”

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For essays and fiction, Molnar lists Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir and How to Make Art at the End of the World by Natalie Loveless, which she calls “salves.” She also recommends three novels: Light Years by James Salter, and two by Rachel Kushner: Creation Lake and The Flamethrowers.

“These novels blew me away,” she said. “Kushner is writing about tough, creative feminists embroiled in the sociopolitical underground. Light Years was written several decades ago, but I wasn’t familiar with James Salter until this year. I’m not sure I’ve ever read prose quite like this. His insight into characters over time and the delicate poetics of his sentences are just astounding.”

Amy Leona Havin is a poet, essayist, and arts journalist based in Portland, Oregon. She writes about language arts, dance, and film for Oregon ArtsWatch and is a staff writer with The Oregonian/OregonLive. Her work has been published in San Diego Poetry Annual, HereIn Arts Journal, Humana Obscura, The Chronicle, and others. She has been an artist-in-residence at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Archipelago Gallery, and Art/Lab, and was shortlisted for the Bridport International Creative Writing Prize in poetry. Havin's dance background is rooted in classical ballet, Graham technique, and Gaga Movement language, and she is the Artistic Director of Portland-based dance performance company, The Holding Project.

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