For Immediate Release
March 22, 2023
Contact: Connie Armstrong
Executive Director
Oklahoma Center for the Book in the Oklahoma Department of Libraries
405/522-3383 or connie.armstrong@libraries.ok.gov
Oklahoma Book Award Finalists Announced
Sheldon Russell to receive Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award
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.
Comments? Questions? Email info@libraries.ok.gov.
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