Connecticut Book Awards Span Genres, Venues, and Subjects - and Great Stories
/Spending more time at home during the past seven months has meant an opportunity to do more reaching for many Connecticut residents. Which may explain the interest in this year’s Connecticut Book Awards, held virtually for the first time last week.
The awards recognize the best books of 2019 about Connecticut or by authors and illustrators from Connecticut. Categories include: Poetry, Books for Young Readers (broken into three subcategories: Picture Books, Fiction, and Nonfiction), Nonfiction, and Fiction. The awards are coordinated by the Connecticut Center for the Book, which is a program of Connecticut Humanities
Awards also include a special category called the Bruce Fraser “Spirit of Connecticut” award. This award is in memory of longtime Connecticut Humanities director Bruce Fraser and celebrates Connecticut’s sense of place.
This year’s winners and honorable mentions are as follows:
NONFICTION
Yale Needs Women, How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant | Anne Gardiner Perkins | Sourcebooks
FICTION
Winner: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous | Ocean Vuong | Penguin Press
Honorable Mention: How Fires End | Marco Rafalà | Little A
YOUNG READERS
Fiction: New Kid | Jerry Craft | HarperCollins Children’s Books
Nonfiction: I See Sea Food, Sea Creatures that Look Like Food | Jenna Grodzicki | Lerner Publishing Group
Picture Book: The Night Is Yours | Abdul-Razak Zachariah | Dial Books for Young Readers
POETRY
Winner: Afterswarm | Margot Schilpp | Carnegie Mellon University Press
Honorable Mention: Without My Asking | Robert Cording, CavenKerry Press
BRUCE FRASER “SPIRIT OF CONNECTICUT” AWARD
Winner: Old Newgate Road | Keith Scribner | Alfred A. Knopf
Nonfiction winner Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant is described as an unflinching account of a group of young women striving for change and an inspiring story of strength, resilience, and courage that continues to resonate today. Author Anne Gardiner Perkins, who arrived at Yale eight years after women were first admitted to the university as undergraduates, interviewed 42 women from that first class in 1967. She wrote “women who go first and speak out help shape a better world for all of us, yet all too often their stories are lost. I was not going to let that happen to this story.”
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous has been described by Amazon as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. An American poet, essayist and novelist, Ocean Vuong was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and immigrated to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Hartford and Glastonbury. His debut novel was a New York Times best seller, and he has earned numerous literary awards, including the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award this year.
New Kid is a graphic novel by Connecticut-based children’s book author and illustrator Jerry Craft which tells the story of Jordan Banks, who experiences culture shock when he enrolls at a private school. The book won the 2020 Newbery Medal, the first graphic novel to earn that award, and the Coretta Scott King Award. It has been described as “a timely, honest novel about starting over at a new school where diversity is low and the struggle to fit in is real.”
Keith Scribner is an American novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, essayist, and educator. Poetry category winner Margot Schilpp teaches at Southern Connecticut State University and at Quinnipiac University.
Connecticut Center for the Book is Connecticut’s affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. Its mission is to celebrate books, writers and readers who engender and sustain the life of the imagination and to highlight authors, illustrators, printers, publishers and the literary heritage of the State of Connecticut.
Connecticut Humanities (CTH) is a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through competitive grantmaking, its website, and social media channels, CTH highlights cultural and educational events and is an advocate for the humanities.
