The 2025 Oregon Book Awards, presented by Literary Arts, will take place on April 28 at Portland Center Stage at The Armory. This event will honor Oregon’s literary talent across various genres and offer fans a chance to celebrate their favorite authors. The awards ceremony, starting at 7:30 p.m., will be hosted by journalist and author Omar El Akkad, known for his works Stories from the Center of the World and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
The event will recognize the achievements of Oregon authors in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, young readers’ literature, and drama. This year, 35 finalists were selected from 212 submissions. Additionally, two Portland residents will be awarded for their contributions to Oregon literature. Laura Moulton, founder of Street Books, a mobile library that provides books to low-income, houseless residents of Portland, will receive the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award. Jelani Memory, founder of A Kids Co., a publishing company focused on books that address empathy, racism, and gender for young readers, will be awarded the Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award.
The finalists for the 2025 Oregon Book Awards are as follows:
Ken Kesey Award for Fiction
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Willy Vlautin (Scappoose) for The Horse
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Kimberly King Parsons (Portland) for We Were the Universe
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Miriam Gershow (Eugene) for Survival Tips
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Victor Lodato (Ashland) for Honey
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Charlie J. Stephens (Port Orford) for A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest
Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry
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Alisha Dietzman (Newberg) for Sweet Movie
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Brian S. Ellis (Portland) for Against Common Sense
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Darla Mottram (Portland) for RECURRENT
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Valerie Witte (Portland) for A Rupture in the Interiors
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Charity E. Yoro (Portland) for ten-cent flower & other territories
Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction
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Rebecca Clarren (Portland) for The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance
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Kimberly Jensen (Monmouth) for Oregon’s Others: Gender, Civil Liberties, and the Surveillance State in the Early Twentieth Century
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Catherine McNeur (Portland) for Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science
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Courtney Thorsson (Eugene) for The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture
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Reiko Hillyer (Portland) for A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States
Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction
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Becky Ellis (Lake Oswego) for Little Avalanches: A Memoir
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Ferris Jabr (Portland) for Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
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Jaclyn Moyer (Corvallis) for On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family, from Punjab to California
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Tim Palmer (Port Orford) for Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis
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Marlena Williams (Portland) for Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist
Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature
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Leslie Barnard Booth (Portland) for A Stone Is a Story
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Leslie Barnard Booth (Portland) for One Day This Tree Will Fall
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Anne Broyles (Portland) for I’m Gonna Paint: Ralph Fasanella, Artist of the People
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Dane Liu (Portland) for Laolao’s Dumplings
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Deborah Hopkinson (West Linn) for Evidence!: How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera
Leslie Bradshaw Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature
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April Henry (Portland) for Stay Dead
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Deborah Hopkinson (West Linn) for The Plot to Kill a Queen
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Megan Lally (Salem) for That’s Not My Name
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Makiia Lucier (Portland) for Dragonfruit
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Elizabeth Rusch (Portland) for The Twenty-One: The True Story of the Youth Who Sued the U.S. Government Over Climate Change
Angus L. Bowmer Award for Drama
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E.M. Lewis (Portland) for Strange Birds
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Rich Rubin (Portland) for Kafka’s Joke
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Andrea Stolowitz (Portland) for Elegy Play
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Ken Yoshikawa (Portland) for From a Hole in the Ground
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Brianna Barrett (Portland) for Still Harvey Still
These finalists showcase the diverse and rich literary landscape of Oregon, highlighting the state’s contribution to contemporary literature in multiple genres.
