Authors, poets, book illustrators, designers, and photographers from across the state and the nation have been selected as finalists for the 2023 Oklahoma Book Awards. The thirty-fourth Annual Oklahoma Book Awards will take place on April 22, 2023, where winners in each category will be announced. The banquet will take place at the Embassy Suites Hotel ballroom, located at 741 N Phillips Avenue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Thirty-six books were selected as finalists from a record 210 entries in the following categories: children/ young adult, design/ illustration, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The 2023 Oklahoma Book Award finalists are: CHILDREN/YOUNG ADULT Poopsie Gets Lost by Hannah E. Harrison Penguin Random House Baa, Baa, Tap Sheep by Kenda Henthorn Sleeping Bear Press Do You Hear What I Hear? by Helen Dunlap Newton Yorkshire Publishing Lovebird Lou by Tammi Sauer Sterling Publishing Company Mary Had a Little Plan by Tammi Sauer Sterling Publishing Company Three Strike Summer by Skyler Schrempp Simon & Schuster Lena and the Burning of Greenwood: A Tulsa Race Massacre Survival Story by Nikki Shannon Smith Capstone Publishing Bobby: A Story of Robert F. Kennedy by Deborah Wiles and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh Scholastic Press DESIGN / ILLUSTRATION / PHOTOGRAPHY Memory Keepers: Life Stories of Choctaw People photography by Judy Allen, Deidre Elrod and Christian Toews; designed by Kevin Wingfield Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Capital City: History of Tishomingo designed by Gentry Chapman, Skip McKinstry, and Wiley Barnes Chickasaw Press Poopsie Gets Lost illustrated by Hannah E. Harrison Penguin Random House Atherton: A Legacy of Family Values designed by Laura Hyde Müllerhaus Legacy The Smallest Hint: Photographs and Poems photographs by David Jennings Yorkshire Publishing Save-It-Forward-Suppers: A Simple Strategy to Save Time, Money, and Sanity illustrated by Jeannine Bulleigh HarperCollins Publishers FICTION Prize for the Fire by Rilla Askew University of Oklahoma Press Red Rain by Lara Bernhardt Admission Press Plot Counterplot by William Bernhardt Babylon Books No Church, No Preacher by Freda Haack Collier Ronald V. Collier Publisher The Physicists’ Daughter by Mary Anna Evans Sourcebooks Hardly Any Shooting Stars Left by B.K. Froman Iron Stream Media For Those Who Are Lost by Julia Bryan Thomas Sourcebooks Fierce Poison: A Barker & Llewelyn Novel by Will Thomas St. Martin’s Publishing Group NON-FICTION Raven and the Hummingbird: A Healing Path to Recovery from Multiple Personality Disorder by Renate F. Caldwell M & M Publishing Children of White Thunder: Legacy of a Cheyenne Family 1830-2020 by Dee Cordry Harry D. Cordry Jr. Publisher The Land and the Days: A Memoir of Family, Friendship, and Grief by Tracy Daugherty University of Oklahoma Press We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle Penguin Random House A Place to Stand by Samuel Hall Reify Press Gore & Owen: Oklahoma’s First Two U.S. Senators by Robert Henry and Bob Burke Oklahoma Hall of Fame Publishing A Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss Simon & Schuster Throwaway Kids: Reforming Oklahoma’s Juvenile Justice System by Terry Smith and Bob Burke Oklahoma Hall of Fame Publishing I Can See for Miles: Overcoming the Past and Running to My Future by Hollie Stuart Marathon Publishing Company POETRY Who Do You Think You Are? by Mary B. Gray Turning Plow Press Level Land: Poems For and About the I35 Corridor co-edited by Crag Hill and Todd Fuller Lamar University Literary Press Cream Lines: Words Risen to Poetry by Karen Kay Knauss Peach Tree Press The Collected Poems of Josie Craig Berry edited and introduction by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish Mongrel Empire Press The Family Book of Martyrs by Benjamin Myers Lamar University Literary Press Author Sheldon Russell will be honored with the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award. Russell is the author of fifteen books, including his award-winning historical fiction novels and his popular Hook Runyon mystery series. Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush won the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction in 2007; and was selected by the Oklahoma Commemoration Commission as an Official Centennial Project, and the Langum Project for Historical Literature. A number of finalist nominations have also been awarded over the course of his writing career. In 2022 Russell’s novel, A Forgotten Evil, won the Spur Award for Best Historical Western from the Western Writers of America.

Russell’s books have earned starred reviews from both Book List and Publisher’s Weekly. The Insane Train was selected as one of the six best mysteries of 2010 by Publisher’s Weekly. The Bridge Troll Murders won the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction in 2018 and was chosen for the Librarian- Nominated Longlist for the Dublin Literary Award in 2019. His psychological suspense novel, A Particular Madness, has been nominated for the 2023 award. Two new novels, Justice Rode the Train and Listen are scheduled for release in 2023.

Russell is a graduate of Northwestern Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma State University. He taught graduate school at the University of Louisville and the University of Central Oklahoma, where he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2000.

Nancy, his wife of fifty- nine years, is a talented sculptor in her own right. They have one daughter Shonda who works at the Alva Public Library. The Russell’s currently live on the family ranch in the beautiful Gloss Mountains of northwestern Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Center for the Book (OCB), located in the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, is affiliated with the National Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The OCB’s mission is to promote Oklahoma authors, books about Oklahoma, and reading for pleasure by all age groups. The OCB has partnered with the non-profit Friends of the Oklahoma Center for the Book for more than thirty years to co-sponsor the annual Oklahoma Book Awards. For more information, contact Connie Armstrong at 405/522-3383 or connie.armstrong@libraries. ok.gov.

For more information, go to oklahoma.gov/libraries/ book-awards.