Here Are the Finalists for the 2025 Oregon Book Awards

Literary Arts announced its finalists for the 2025 Oregon Book Awards yesterday. Bookish types, that means you, have three months to hit the pages before the awards ceremony April 28.

The 38th annual competition recognizes achievements of Oregon authors in several genres, including fiction, nonfiction, drama and poetry. The winners will be announced live at Portland Center Stage at the Armory at the event hosted by Omar El Akkad, a two-time winner himself.

“It is important to have a cultural organization like Literary Arts that tries to uplift as many diverse stories as possible,” El Akkad said in a press release. El Akkad previously won for his novels American War and What Strange Paradise.

This year, 35 titles by Oregon authors were chosen as finalists by panels of out-of-state judges. Two special award winners have already been determined: Laura Moulton, founder of Street Books, will win the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award, and Jelani Memory, founder of A Kids Co., will take home the Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award.

Here’s the full list of 2025 Oregon Book Award finalists:

KEN KESEY AWARD FOR FICTION

Miriam Gershow of Eugene, Survival Tips: Stories (Propeller Books)

Victor Lodato of Ashland, Honey (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers)

Kimberly King Parsons of Portland, We Were the Universe (Knopf/Penguin Random House)

Charlie J. Stephens of Port Orford, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest (Torrey House Press)

Willy Vlautin of Scappoose, The Horse (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers)

STAFFORD/HALL AWARD FOR POETRY

Alisha Dietzman of Newberg, Sweet Movie (Beacon Press)

Brian S. Ellis of Portland, Against Common Sense (Limit Zero Publications)

Darla Mottram of Portland, RECURRENT (Querencia Press)

Valerie Witte of Portland, A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie Press)

Charity E. Yoro of Portland, ten-cent flower & other territories (First Matter Press)

FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION

Rebecca Clarren of Portland, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance (Viking Books/Penguin Random House)

Kimberly Jensen of Monmouth, Oregon’s Others: Gender, Civil Liberties, and the Surveillance State in the Early Twentieth Century (University of Washington Press)

Catherine McNeur of Portland, Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science (Basic Books/Hachette Book Group)

Courtney Thorsson of Eugene, The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture (Columbia University Press)

Reiko Hillyer of Portland, A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States (Duke University Press)

SARAH WINNEMUCCA AWARD FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION

Becky Ellis of Lake Oswego, Little Avalanches: A Memoir (Regalo Press)

Ferris Jabr of Portland, Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life (Random House/Penguin Random House)

Jaclyn Moyer of Corvallis, On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family, from Punjab to California (Beacon Press)

Tim Palmer of Port Orford, Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis (University of California Press)

Marlena Williams of Portland, Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press)

ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Anne Broyles of Portland, I’m Gonna Paint: Ralph Fasanella, Artist of the People (Holiday House)

Dane Liu of Portland, Laolao’s Dumplings (Henry Holt BYR/Macmillan Publishing Group)

Leslie Barnard Booth of Portland, A Stone Is a Story (Margaret K. McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster)

Leslie Barnard Booth of Portland, One Day This Tree Will Fall (Margaret K. McElderry Books/Simon & Schuster)

Deborah Hopkinson of West Linn, Evidence!: How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera (Knopf BYR/Penguin Random House)

LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR MIDDLE GRADE AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

April Henry of Portland, Stay Dead (Christy Ottaviano Books of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers/Hachette Book Group)

Deborah Hopkinson of West Linn, The Plot to Kill a Queen (Scholastic Press)

Megan Lally of Salem, That’s Not My Name (Sourcebooks Fire/Sourcebooks)

Makiia Lucier of Portland, Dragonfruit (Clarion Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

Elizabeth Rusch of Portland, The Twenty-One: The True Story of the Youth Who Sued the U.S. Government Over Climate Change (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

ANGUS L. BOWMER AWARD FOR DRAMA

E.M. Lewis of Portland, Strange Birds

Rich Rubin of Portland, Kafka’s Joke

Andrea Stolowitz of Portland, Elegy Play

Ken Yoshikawa of Portland, From a Hole in the Ground

Brianna Barrett of Portland, Still H​arvey Still

GO: 2025 Oregon Book Awards at Portland Center Stage at The Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave., literary-arts.org/event/2025-oregon-book-awards. 7:30 pm Monday, April 28. $15-$65.