It's no surpise to see Lidia Yuknavitch, Leah Sottile, Breena Bard, and David F. Walker among the nominees. by Suzette Smith Literary Arts announced the finalists for its coveted 2026 Oregon Book Awards this morning, selecting via j uries of out-of-state judges just 35 works from 200 submissions. This list always largely dictates our spring reading plans, as we fill in what we may have missed before the ceremony night on Monday, April 20. This is a graphic novel year—the category flips biennially, on and off with the award for plays and dramatic works. We're chuffed to see Breena Bard's Wildfire nominated, which the Mercury praised for its examination of "the overall human impact on the environment" and practical ways that young people can undertake activism "whether by writing letters, volunteering, or planting trees." Other strong contenders in that category are Speechless by past Oregon Book Award winner Aron Nels Steinke and the highly lauded Big Jim and the White Boy by David F. Walker. In the fiction category, it's no surprise to see Lidia Yuknavitch's Reading the Waves face off with A Field Guide to the Subterranean: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and Our Deepest Selves by Justin Hocking. Both writers are previous book award winners. In the nonfiction category, journalist Leah Sottile's Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age brings strong competition for High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the American West by the Oregonian's Jonathan Bach. We haven't read everything on this list just yet, so there are no doubt surprises in store. The bookish nonprofit also awarded a number of fellowships, which you can check out here. Read whole list is below: 2026 OREGON BOOK AWARD FINALISTS KEN KESEY AWARD FOR FICTION   Olufunke Grace Bankole, The Edge of Water (Tin House) Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception: A Novel (Dutton) Kevin Maloney, Horse Girl Fever (Clash Books)   Madeline McDonnell, Lonesome Ballroom (Rescue Press)   Karen Thompson Walker, The Strange Case of Jane O. (Random House)   STAFFORD/HALL AWARD FOR POETRY H. G. Dierdorff, Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter (University of Nevada Press) Garrett Hongo, Ocean of Clouds (Alfred A. Knopf)   Jennifer Perrine, Beautiful Outlaw (Kelsey Street Press)    Lisa Wells, The Fire Passage (Four Way Books)   Joe Wilkins, Pastoral, 1994 (River River Books)  FRANCES FULLER VICTOR AWARD FOR GENERAL NONFICTION   Jonathan Bach, High Desert, Higher Costs: Bend and the Housing Crisis in the American West (Oregon State University Press)  Rebecca Grant, Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom (Avid Reader Press) M. L. Herring, Born of Fire and Rain: Journey into a Pacific Coastal Forest (Yale University Press) Jamie Mustard, Child X: A Memoir of Slavery, Poverty, Celebrity, and Scientology (BenBella Books) Leah Sottile, Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age (Hachette Book Group/Grand Central Publishing) SARAH WINNEMUCCA AWARD FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION  Judith Barrington, Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs (Oregon State University Press)  Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, Holding: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts (Steerforth) Justin Hocking, A Field Guide to the Subterranean: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and Our Deepest Selves (Counterpoint Press/Catapult Book Group) Wayne Scott, The Maps They Gave Us: One Marriage Reimagined (Black Lawrence Press) Lidia Yuknavitch, Reading the Waves (Riverhead Books)  ELOISE JARVIS MCGRAW AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE Zoey Abbott, This Year, a Witch! (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Simon Schuster) Michelle Sumovich, I Have Three Cats… (Penguin Random House) A.A. Livingston, Grizelda the Green Hates Halloween (Flamingo Books/Penguin Random House) Elizabeth Rusch, All About Patterns (Charlesbridge) Kerilynn Wilson, A Monstrous Bedtime (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins) LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR MIDDLE GRADE AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE  Waka T. Brown, Rick Kotani’s 400 Million Dollar Summer (Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins Children’s Books) Courtney Gould, What the Woods Took: A Novel (Wednesday Books) Rosanne Parry, A Wolf Called Fire (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins) Sara Ryan, Mountain Upside Down (Dutton Books for Young Readers) Shana Targosz, River of Spirits (The Underwild #1) (Aladdin Books/Simon Schuster) AWARD FOR GRAPHIC LITERATURE Breena Bard, Wildfire (Little, Brown Ink)   Steven Christian, Welcome To Iltopia: An Eyelnd Feevr Augmented Reality Experience (Iltopia Studios) Rowan Kingsbury, Avery and the Fairy Circle (Flying Eye Books) Aron Nels Steinke Speechless (Graphix/Scholastic) David F. Walker, Big Jim and the White Boy (Ten Speed Graphic) ...read more read less