The winners of the 2018 Pacific Northwest Book Awards, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and chosen by a volunteer committee of independent booksellers from more than 400 nominated titles published in 2017, are:
American War: A Novel by Omar El Akkad (Knopf/Vintage)
The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken (Dial Books for Young Readers)
Dead Feminists: Historic Heroines in Living Color by Chandler O'Leary and Jessica Spring (Sasquatch Books)
Idaho: A Novel by Emily Ruskovich (Random House)
Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean by Jonathan White (Trinity University Press)
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown)
The committee also chose to recognize late author Brian Doyle with an Indie Spirit Honor for his body of work and vigorous support of independent booksellers in the Northwest and beyond. Doyle won a PNBA Award in 2016 for his collection Children & Other Wild Animals.
---
The three finalists for the Story Prize, honoring the best short story collection published in 2017, are:
The King Is Always Above the People by Daniel Alarcón (Riverhead Books)
Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin Press)
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
The winner will be announced at the Story Prize's annual award event in New York City on February 28, where the finalists will read from and discuss their work with Larry Dark after which Story Prize founder Julie Lindsey will announce the winner, who will receive $20,000. Runners up will receive $5,000.
---
The winners of the 2018 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, which are presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries to recognize books for children and teens that exemplify high literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience, are:
Gold Medalists
Younger Readers: The Language of Angels: A Story About the Reinvention of Hebrew by Richard Michelson, illustrated by Karla Gudeon (Charlesbridge)
Older Readers: Refugee by Alan Gratz (Scholastic Press)
Teen Readers: The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe, translated by Lilit Thwaites (Godwin Books, an imprint of Henry Holt)
Honor Books
Younger Readers: Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam, adapted by Fawzia Gilani- Williams, illustrated by Chiara Fedele (Kar-Ben Publishing); and Drop by Drop: A Story of Rabbi Akiva by Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg (Kar-Ben Publishing, a division of Lerner Publishing Group)
Older Readers: Viva, Rose! by Susan Krawitz (Holiday House), which was also the recipient of the 2015 Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award; This Is Just a Test by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang (Scholastic Press); The Six- Day Hero by Tammar Stein (Kar-Ben Publishing)
Teen Readers: To Look a Nazi in the Eye: A Teen’s Account of a War Criminal Trial by Kathy Kacer with Jordana Lebowitz (Second Story Press); Almost Autumn by Marianne Kaurin, translated by Rosie Hedger (Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic); The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke (Albert Whitman & Co.)
The Sydney Taylor Body of Work Award went to Harold Grinspoon and PJ Library, a project of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that is a family engagement program, sending free books celebrating Jewish values and culture to families with children 6 months through 8 years old. This honor has been given 12 times in the 50-year history of the Sydney Taylor Awards. The last recipient was author Eric Kimmel in 2004.
Judith Pransky, author of The Seventh Handmaiden, won the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award, which is offered annually to an unpublished manuscript that "has broad appeal to readers aged 8-13 and presents Jewish life in a positive light."