[OPLINLIST] 2016 OHIOANA AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED

[marshams at library.ohio.gov]

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2016 Ohioana Award winners Announced
Literary prizes to be presented September 23 at Ohio Statehouse

Columbus, OH (July 18, 2016) -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.

Short bios of the winners are listed below. For further information or to request photographs of the authors or images of the book covers, please contact David Weaver, Executive Director of the Ohioana Library.


Biographies of 2016 Ohioana Award winners


Mary Doria Russell (Fiction and Readers' Choice) has been called one of the most versatile writers in contemporary American literature. Widely praised for her meticulous research, fine prose, and compelling narrative drive, she is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Sparrow, Children of God, A Thread of Grace, Dreamers of the Day, Doc, and Epitaph. Dr. Russell holds a Ph.D. in biological anthropology. She lives in Lyndhurst, Ohio.


Wil Haygood (Nonfiction) is currently the Boadway Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence in the department of media, journalism, and film at Miami University, Ohio. For nearly three decades he was a journalist, serving as a national and foreign correspondent at The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and then at The Washington Post, where he wrote the story "A Butler Well Served by This Election," which became the basis for the award-winning motion picture The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels. Haygood's book The Butler: A Witness to History has been translated into a dozen foreign languages. For his work on Showdown, Haygood was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. His biographies of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Sammy Davis Jr., and Sugar Ray Robinson have all garnered wide acclaim. Haygood is a native of Ohio's capital city, and won his first Ohioana Award in 1998 for his memoir, The Haygoods of Columbus: A Love Story.



David McCullough (Book about Ohio or an Ohioan) has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books include The Greater Journey, 1776, Brave Companions, The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, and The Wright Brothers. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. McCullough's voice is familiar to millions of Americans as the host (1988-99) of PBS' American Experience and a number of documentaries in collaboration with filmmaker Ken Burns, including his epic series, The Civil War. McCullough lives in Boston.



Nin Andrews (Poetry) Nin Andrews' poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Agni, The Paris Review, and four editions of Best American Poetry.  The author of 6 chapbooks and 6 full-length poetry collections, she has won two Ohio individual artist grants, the Pearl Chapbook Contest, the Kent State University chapbook contest, and the Gerald Cable Poetry Award. She is also the editor of a book of translations of the Belgian poet, Henri Michaux, Someone Wants to Steal My Name.  Her book, Why God Is a Woman, was published by BOA Editions in 2015. She lives in Poland, Ohio.



Loren Long (Juvenile Literature) is the author and illustrator of the New York Times best-selling picture books Otis, Otis and the Tornado, Otis and the Puppy, An Otis Christmas and Otis and the Scarecrow. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator of President Barack Obama's picture book Of Thee I Sing, the re-illustrated edition of The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, and Mr. Peabody's Apples by Madonna. His most recent work, Little Tree, a picture book for all ages, has been named the inaugural "Floyd's Pick" (in honor of late children's librarian and reading advocate Floyd Dickman) for the State Library of Ohio's 2017-18 "Choose to Read Ohio" list and will represent the Buckeye State at the 2016 National Book Festival. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Long now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.



Shelley Pearsall (Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature) was a teacher and museum historian before becoming a full-time author. Her first novel, Trouble Don't Last, won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The idea for The Seventh Most Important Thing began many years ago when she first saw outsider artist James Hampton's amazing work. She was disappointed that so little is known about Hampton and was intrigued that his work was brought to light by anonymous sources. It was the perfect foundation for Pearsall's remarkable, inspiring novel; which has been named to the State Library of Ohio's 2017-18 "Choose to Read Ohio" list in addition to winning a 2016 Ohioana Book Award. She lives in Silver Lake, Ohio.



Eliese Colette Goldbach (Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant) is a graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program.  Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.  She lives and writes in Cleveland, Ohio.
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