Award Winners and Finalists

Award for Children’s Literature
Sponsored by Xcel Energy:
Lynne Jonell – Emmy and the Incredible
Shrinking Rat
Published by Henry Holt and Company

When Emmy discovers that she and her parents are being drugged with rat potions by her horrid nanny, Miss Barmy, she and her animal friends must foil the dastardly plot. Readers will enjoy the clashes between Emmy and the mischievous rat in this whimsical adventure.

Award for General Nonfiction
Sponsored by Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd.:
Charles Baxter – The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot
Published by Graywolf Press*

Acclaimed writer and essayist Charles Baxter explores the hidden overtones and undertones in fictional work. As the author explains, “A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and the unseen.” Baxter teaches at the University of Minnesota.

Award for Genre Fiction:
William Kent Krueger – Thunder Bay
Published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster

The seventh book in the Cork O’Connor series takes the protagonist into Canada where he attempts to locate the son his friend, the Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux, fathered several years ago. Reuniting the two proves more dangerous than anyone predicted. William Kent Krueger, winner of last year’s Genre Fiction Award, lives in St. Paul.

Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction
Sponsored by Wellington Management, Inc.:
Patricia Hampl – The Florist’s Daughter
Published by Harcourt

In her most personal book to date, St. Paul author Patricia Hampl revisits her childhood as she experiences her mother’s death. Daughter of a Czech father whose floral work gave him entrée to high society, and a distrustful Irishwoman with an uncanny ability to tell a tale, Hampl paints a picture of herself as someone who remained a devoted daughter well into adulthood.

Award for Minnesota
Sponsored by Marquette Financial Companies:
Doug Hoverson - Land of Amber Waters:
The History of Brewing in Minnesota
Published by the University of Minnesota Press*

Starting with Minnesota’s first brewery in 1849, Doug Hoverson, a certified beer judge and award-winning homebrewer, tells the story of the state’s beer industry from small-town breweries to larger companies such as Schell’s and Grain Belt. The book also highlights the vibrant beer culture of today including a new wave of breweries and brewpubs.

Award for Novel & Short Story:
Wang Ping – The Last Communist Virgin
Published by Coffee House Press*

From the restaurants of New York’s Chinatown to the retail emporium of Bergdorf Goodman, and from remote Chinese military outposts to the streets of Beijing, Wang Ping’s stories open a window into the rapid transformations of an ancient culture. Born in Shanghai, the author currently teaches at Macalester College.

Award for Poetry:
Deborah Keenan – Willow Room, Green Door
Published by Milkweed Editions*

Written over the course of three decades, this collection presents a body of work addressing themes of love and rage; vulnerability and authority; and distraction and focus. In this collection, the reader gets a sense of inhabiting the world with the poet, of walking through time, both historical and personal.

Award for Young Adult Literature:
Will Weaver - Defect
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

David was born with different features than other people. Some are apparent to others, such as his hearing aids and misshapen face. Others are secret, terrifying to some and magical to others. Will Weaver has written many notable young adult novels as well as the short story on which the movie "Sweet Land" was based.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat
Lynne Jonell
When Emmy discovers that she and her parents are being drugged with rat potions by her horrid nanny, Miss Barmy, she and her animal friends must foil the dastardly plot.  Readers will enjoy the clashes between Emmy and the mischievous rat in this whimsical adventure.  As a bonus, flip the pages and watch the rat tumble into outstretched hands.

(Picture Window Books)

Farmer Cap
Jill Kalz
Sahin Erkocak, illustrator
Eccentric Farmer Cap plants crops like spaghetti and popsicles.  The other farmers laugh at him, but a spectacular harvest causes them to rethink their traditional views.  This is the fourth book in Jill Kalz’s Pfeffernut County series.  The New Ulm author has written nearly 50 children’s books.

Guess What Is Growing Inside This EggMia Posada
From penguins to octopi, this book asks its readers to guess what is growing inside various eggs.  Rhymes, riddles and enchanting watercolor collages are used to portray the many ways animals care for their eggs and young.  Mia Posada is the author and illustrator of four children’s books.

Photo © Keri Pickett

Looking for Asian America: An Ethnocentric Tour
Wing Young Huie
In search of contemporary Asian America, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie traveled with his wife, Tara, through nearly forty states and Canada.  His book explores and documents the funny, touching, and sometimes strange intersection of Asian American and American cultures.

The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting – An Oral History
Jim Walsh
The rise and fall of the '80s rock band, the Replacements, is documented through a compilation of interviews by Jim Walsh.  The account provides readers access into the world of underground rock-and-roll.  Walsh, a long time music journalist, lives in Minneapolis where he performs and records as his musical alter-ego, The Mad Ripple.

Photo © Stacy Sandstrom

That the World May Know:  Bearing Witness to Atrocity
James Dawes
After great tragedies come the stories of the survivors, the witnesses, and those who attempted to help.  This book, through the use of first-hand accounts, illuminates the complexities of modern humanitarian efforts.  James Dawes teaches at Macalester College.

Maiden Rock
Mary Logue
The author returns to her acclaimed Claire Watson series with a tale that is both personal and tragic.  Claire’s daughter Meg is struggling with depression after her best friend is found dead at the foot of Maiden Rock—an apparent suicide.  Working on this case takes Claire into the ever growing methamphetamine culture in her rural community. 

Protect and Defend
Vince Flynn
Mitch Rapp, counter terrorism agent, returns for his eighth time in Vince Flynn’s New York Times’ best-selling political thriller series.  While attempting to destabilize Iran and destroy the country’s secret nuclear weapons facility, Rapp is ambushed and his boss taken hostage. He is given 24 hours and unlimited authority to get his boss back safely.

Photo © Michael O’Neill

Photo © Tony Nelson

The Dog Says How
Kevin Kling
In this collection of autobiographical stories, popular storyteller and frequent NPR commentator Kevin Kling weaves scenes of childhood antics and adult absurdities with themes of overcoming tragedies, forging lifelong friendships, and living with disabilities.  In the title story, Kling learns how to use voice-recognition software after his near-fatal motorcycle accident.

The Florist’s Daughter
Patricia Hampl
In her most personal book to date, St. Paul author Patricia Hampl revisits her childhood as she experiences her mother’s death.  Daughter of a Czech father whose floral work gave him entrée to high society, and a distrustful Irishwoman with an uncanny ability to tell a tale, Hampl paints a picture of herself as someone who remained a devoted daughter well into adulthood.

Photo © Partick O’Leary

Home on the Road: Further Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth
Catherine Watson
From Tibet to the Galapagos, from the Arctic Ocean to Polynesia, Catherine Watson’s second collection of travel essays takes readers to the far corners of the globe, sharing rich encounters, insights into the human spirit and the bittersweet tension between home and away. Watson served for many years as the Star Tribune’s chief travel writer.

The Wet Collection
Joni Tevis
In her debut book, Joni Tevis draws attention to the fragile connection between human beings and the mysteries that surround them in an attempt to puzzle out lost histories.  The book follows the author through many adventures, including a comical account of her summer spent working as a cemetery plot salesperson and a chronicle of her stint dressing up like a beaver when working as a park ranger.

Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out
Annette Atkins
Each chapter of this innovative state history focuses on a telling detail, a revealing incident, or a meaningful issue that illuminates a larger event, social trends, or Minnesota politics. Annette Atkins, a professor at Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict, uses intimate and rich accounts of people’s lives to powerfully tell history.

Land of Amber Waters:
The History of Brewing in Minnesota
Doug Hoverson
Starting with Minnesota’s first brewery in 1849, Doug Hoverson, a certified beer judge and award-winning homebrewer, tells the story of the state’s beer industry from small-town breweries to larger companies such as Schell’s and Grain Belt.  The book also highlights the vibrant beer culture of today including a new wave of breweries and brewpubs.

Mike Lynch’s Minnesota Weatherwatch: A Complete Guide for Weather-Obsessed Minnesotans
Mike Lynch
This entertaining and comprehensive guide presents a full review of the science and lore behind Minnesota’s legendary weather.  Longtime WCCO broadcaster Mike Lynch opens with a history of meteorology, continues with a crash course in the science of the atmosphere and weather systems, and concludes with fun and informative tips for making one’s own weather predictions.

We Are at Home: Pictures of the Ojibwe People
Bruce White
This fascinating history of the Ojibwe people at home in the Minnesota landscape is told through more than 200 vivid photographs. Historian Bruce White provides tremendous insight about the people in the pictures such as what they were doing on a particular day, how they came to be photographed, and how they made use of costumes and props.

The Last Communist Virgin
Wang Ping
From the restaurants of New York’s Chinatown to the retail emporium of Bergdorf Goodman, and from remote Chinese military outposts to the streets of Beijing, Wang Ping’s stories open a window into the rapid transformations of an ancient culture. Born in Shangai, the author currently teaches at Macalester College.

Photo © Jesse Katzman

Pontoon
Garrison Keillor
The new Lake Wobegon novel focuses on the secret life and sudden death of 82-year-old Evelyn Peterson.  Her daughter Barbara and the whole Lutheran community are quite surprised at Evelyn’s instructions that she be cremated, without a prayer or eulogy, and that her ashes be sealed in a bowling ball and dropped in the lake.

Pretty Little Mistakes
Heather McElhatton
Author Heather McElhatton, also an independent producer for MPR and PRI, has created a unique novel with more than 150 possible endings.  The reader may end up in an opulent mansion or homeless down by the river; happily married with their own corporation or pecked to death by ducks in London; a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park.

The View from Mount Joy
Lorna Landvik
Having once dreamed of a career in pro hockey or as a globetrotting journalist, Joe Anderson can’t believe that life has him working in the aisles of Haugland Foods.  This latest novel by bestselling author Lorna Landvik is about a man, a supermarket, temptation, the roads not taken, and the great and unexpected pleasures found in living a good life.

Photo © Carl Brookins

Music for Landing Planes By
Éireann Lorsung
In her debut collection, combining art and artifacts to create verse that is uniquely modern, Éireann Lorsung honors the makers, methods, and materials embodied in daily objects.  From the copper plate of an intaglio print to the patched muslin form of a dressmaker’s mannequin, the ephemeral becomes eternal through the poet’s work.

The Resurrection Trade
Leslie Adrienne Miller
In her sensuous fifth collection of poetry, Leslie Adrienne Miller delves into the mysteries of early anatomical studies and medical illustrations where she finds stories of women’s lives—both tragic and comic.  Through these poems, the author sheds light on a truth she calls, “the strange collusion of imaginary science and real art.”  Miller teaches at the University of St. Thomas.

Photo © Ann Marsden

This Brightness
William Reichard
The poems in this collection, the second in a trilogy, are inhabited by strong personalities—lovers, family members, cats and artists—both present and past.  This collection begins and ends with lived experience, picking up where the first in the trilogy ends in the realm of theory and hypothesis.  This Brightness confronts what William Reichard calls the forces of change:  hope and despair.

Photo © Laura Migliorino

Willow Room, Green Door
Deborah Keenan
Written over the course of three decades, this collection presents a body of work addressing themes of love and rage, vulnerability and authority, and distraction and focus.  In this latest of several Deborah Keenan collections, the reader gets a sense of inhabiting the world with the poet, of walking through time, both historical and personal.

Billie Standish Was Here
Nancy Crocker
Set in a rural Missouri town in the 1960s, Nancy Crocker’s novel explores the friendship between lonely 11-year-old Billie and her elderly neighbor, Miss Lydia.  When a tragedy befalls Billie that she can’t bear alone, the bond between them is both tested and sealed.  This is the author’s first novel.

Chasing Tail Lights
Patrick Jones
Eighteen-year-old Christy lives in a brutal world where her only escape is to imagine herself speeding away with the receding tail lights leaving Flint, Michigan.  But she has a secret, and only when she begins to speak its truth, does she gain the power to change her life.  This is an unflinching look at the effects of poverty, drugs, and abuse.

Defect
Will Weaver
David was born with different features than other people.  Some are apparent to others, such as his hearing aids and misshapen face.  Others are secret, terrifying to some and magical to others.  Will Weaver has written many notable young adult novels as well as the short story on which the movie Sweet Land was based.

Falling Boy
Alison McGhee
Joseph, recently paralyzed and wheelchair-bound, works with Zap in a Minneapolis bakery.  Along with nine-year-old Enzo, Zap tries to figure out how Joseph came to be injured, hoping that it was a result of a daring superhero feat.  Alison McGhee creates a dreamlike world where kids create their own space, filled with questions of heroism.