Seattle Culture
And the Winners Are…
Seattle authors sweep the 2024 Washington State Book Awards
By Sarah Stackhouse September 24, 2024
The wait is over. This year’s standout books have been announced.
Seattle’s Jane Wong took home the Creative Nonfiction/Memoir prize for Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, a powerful exploration of her Chinese-American upbringing. In the Fiction category, Seattle author Sonora Jha’s The Laughter won. For General Nonfiction/Biography, Timothy Egan of Seattle won for A Fever in the Heartland, a gripping New York Times Bestseller about the Ku Klux Klan’s attempt to seize power in the U.S. And Washington State Poet Laureate and Lummi tribal member Rena Priest won the Poetry award for I Sing the Salmon Home, an anthology featuring poems from more than 150 Washington poets from across the state.
Other Seattle-based winners include Ben Clanton and Andy Chou Musser for the Picture Book Ploof, Jessixa and Aaron Bagley for their illustrated book Duel, and Margaret Owen for her Young Adult novel Painted Devils.
2024 Washington State Book Awards Winners:
- Creative Nonfiction/Memoir: Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong
- Fiction: The Laughter by Sonora Jha
- General Nonfiction/Biography: A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
- Poetry: I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State, edited by Rena Priest
- Picture Books: Ploof by Ben Clanton and Andy Chou Musser
- Books for Young Readers: Duel by Jessixa Bagley, illustrated by Aaron Bagley
- Young Adult Literature: Painted Devils by Margaret Owen
Winners were selected from a pool of 292 submissions by a panel of judges, which included librarians, authors, and independent booksellers:
Judges for adult titles:
- Jennie Diaz, Seattle Public Library
- Marcus Harrison Green, Publisher, Author, Columnist, Speaker, and Podcaster
- Sarah Jaffa, Kitsap Regional Library
- Valerie McBeth, Northwest Indian College Lummi Library
- Alex Yokom, Browsers Bookshop
Judges for youth titles:
- Lauren Kessel, Teacher-Librarian, Kent Elementary School
- Jane López-Santillana, Librarian, Sno-Isle Libraries
- Avery Mead, Teacher-Librarian, East Valley High School Library
Full details can be found at the Washington Center for the Book. Submissions for the 2025 awards are now open.
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