Finalists for the 2023 Minnesota Book Awards were announced recently, with a total of 35 books in nine different categories making their way to the in-person award ceremony at the Ordway on May 2. The annual Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library literary competition aims to connect readers and writers throughout the state by sharing the stories of our neighbors. Each season, the competition highlights the chosen writers, illustrators, editors, and publishers with reader-friendly activities and events.
The Minnesota Book Awards is a year-long program that begins with submission in the fall and continues into the winter with a preliminary and a final round of book judging. The winners are announced each spring at the award ceremony, and tickets for this year’s event can be found online on the Ordway’s website. (Until then, get your read on with the full list below.)
Children’s Literature:
The Dark Was Done by Lauren Stringer
So Much Snow by Kristen Schroeder; illustrated by Sarah Jacoby
Where We Come From by Diane Wilson, Sun Yung Shin, Shannon Gibney, and John Coy; illustrated by Dion MBD
You Are Life by Bao Phi; illustrated by Hannah Li
General Nonfiction:
Daughters of Arraweelo: Stories of Somali Women by Ayaan Adan
They Don’t Want Her There: Fighting Sexual and Racial Harassment in the American University by Carolyn Chalmers
Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team That Changed the Game by Maya Washington
Wilhelm’s Way: The Inspiring Story of the Iowa Chemist Who Saved The Manhattan Project by Teresa Wilhelm Waldof
Genre Fiction:
The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey
Sinister Graves by Marcie Rendon
The Temps by Andrew DeYoung
The Ursulina by Brian Freeman
Memoir and Creative Nonfiction:
Farewell Transmission: Notes from Hidden Spaces by Will McGrath
Seven Aunts by Staci Lola Drouillard
Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide by Juliet Patterson
The Way She Wants to Get There: Telling on Myself by Mary Moore Easter
Middle Grade Literature:
The Counterclockwise Heart by Brian Farrey
Meet Me Halfway by Anika Fajardo
Monsters in the Mist by Juliana Brandt
Windswept by Margi Preus
Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction:
A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum by Lansing Shepard, Don Luce, Barbara Coffin, and Gwen Schagrin
Rochester: An Urban Biography by Virginia M. Wright-Peterson
The Steger Homestead Kitchen: Simple Recipes for an Abundant Life by Will Steger and Rita
Mae Steger with Beth Dooley
When Minnehaha Flowed With Whiskey: A Spirited History of the Falls by Karen E. Cooper
Novel and Short Story:
The Barrens by Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson
Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress
Till the Wheels Fall Off by Brad Zellar
Poetry:
How to Communicate by John Lee Clark
Real Work by Janna Knittel
Surface Displacements by Sheila Packa
The Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin
Young Adult Literature:
Born in a Red Canoe by Katharine Johnson
The Complicated Calculus (and Cows) of Carl Paulsen by Gary Eldon Peter
Maxwell and the Legend of Inini-Makwa by Simon Hargreaves
Mendel by Damone Bester