From The OHIOANA LIBRARY
COLIMBUS — The Ohioana Library has announced the winners of the 2016 Ohioana Book Awards.
The awards, established in 1942, honor Ohio authors in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Juvenile Literature, and Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature. The final category, About Ohio or an Ohioan, may also include books by non-Ohio authors. The Ohioana Awards are among the oldest and longest-established state literary prizes in the nation. “From the nearly 300 books that were eligible for this year’s awards, thirty finalists in six categories were selected by jurors,” said David Weaver, Executive Director of the Ohioana Library. “To make this short list is itself recognition of excellence and selecting a winner is a challenge. The books and authors chosen as 2016’s honorees are truly stellar.” This year marks the 75th anniversary of the awards, which will be presented at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on Friday, September 23.
The winners are:
- Fiction: Mary Doria Russell. Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral. Ecco, 2015.
- Nonfiction: Wil Haygood. Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America. Knopf, 2015.
- About Ohio or an Ohioan: David McCullough. The Wright Brothers. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
- Poetry: Nin Andrews. Why God Is a Woman. BOA Editions Ltd., 2015.
- Juvenile Literature: Loren Long. Little Tree. Philomel Books, 2015.
- Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature: Shelley Pearsall. The Seventh Most Important Thing. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2015.
In addition to the juried awards, Ohioana for the first time invited the public to vote for one of the finalists to receive a Readers’ Choice Award. More than 1,100 people voted, and the winning book was Russell’s Epitaph.
Ohioana also named Eliese Colette Goldbach of Cleveland as the recipient of the 27th Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, a competitive prize for Ohio writers age 30 or younger who have not yet published a book. Goldbach won for her essay, In the Memory of the Living. Named for Ohioana’s second director and endowed by his family, the Marvin Grant has helped launch a number of writers, including 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Anthony Doerr.
