Authors come out to play

Oregon Book Awards will honor the state’s finest wordsmiths

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Nov 16, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Americans love awards. To paraphrase English author Martin Amis, when a British writer wins an award, he gets a new typewriter. When an American writer wins an award, he gets a new life.

That’s the secret hope behind the Oregon Book Awards, which honor the state’s best writers of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young-readers literature. Authors must live in the state; works by this year’s nominees were published between April 2003 and March 2004.

“Writing is a solitary pursuit, in a way that theater and music and dance are not, and this evening gathers people to acknowledge these artists’ work,” says Carrie Hoops, executive director of Literary Arts, the statewide nonprofit arts organization that puts on the do.

Around 300 people usually show up, not just curious readers but writers’ friends and families, librarians and booksellers. The doors open at 6:30 p.m., and for $25 you get to listen to local actors reading excerpts from the winners, get books signed and hobnob with all the nominees. After the ceremony there’s a wine-fueled reception. (Hoops stresses that it’s a good pinot noir, not the cheap stuff.)

Winners receive $500, but winning also can put writers on the radar for other awards. Hoops cites Korean-born novelist Chang-rae Lee as an example: After getting a master of fine arts degree at the University of Oregon, he won a Literary Arts fellowship and the Oregon Book Award along the way to several national awards for his debut novel, “Native Speaker.”

Author Rick Bass, who is based in Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana, will be the emcee for the awards ceremony. Bass admires the Staffords, poets William and his son, Kim Ñ “of course” Ñ as well as Ken Kesey.

“I won’t say I’m aware of a particular Oregon style of writing, but that’s not the kind of thing I look for. I think story and character come first,” he says. Bass writes fiction and nonfiction; his books include “Where the Sea Used to Be,” “Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had” and “The Hermit Story: Stories.”

This year, the most widely anticipated prizes are for general nonfiction and for creative nonfiction.

In the general nonfiction finalist pile is Jewel Lansing, author of the 576-page history of our city, “Portland: People, Politics, and Power 1851-2001” (Oregon State University Press). She acknowledges her debt to E. Kimbark MacColl’s three books about the city, which go up to 1950, but adds that she was aiming at a different reader.

“I wanted it to be a lasting reference book but also wanted it to be interesting to the general public,” she says. It took her six years to write, poring over city and county records. The book is already in its third printing of 1,000 per run.

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