40th Annual Northern California Book Awards (Virtual)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

40th Annual Northern California Book Awards
Sunday, July 11, 2021, 2:00pm PDT
This event will be live on Zoom Webinar and on the San Francisco Public Library’s YouTube channel:
Zoom Registration – http://bit.ly/NoCalBook7-11-21

For updates, including judges’ reviews, see http://poetryflash.org/programs/?p=ncba_2021

Celebrate Northern California’s vibrant literary scene on Sunday, July 11, 2021, 2:00 pm, when the Northern California Book Awards will recognize the best published works of 2020 by Northern California authors and California translators! Presented by the Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, and San Francisco Public Library, with our community partners Mechanics’ Institute Library, Women’s National Book Association-San Francisco Chapter, and Pen West. City Lights Books will host the NCBA virtual bookshop for featured books.

This year, for the first time, the California Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose will honor works of translation by translators across California. Translation nominees named here include literary translators from all over the Golden State, including North Bay, Oakland, San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and San Diego areas.

FRED CODY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT and SERVICE
Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2015-2017; Teacher and Activist
Every Day We Get More Illegal, City Lights Books, 2020

NCBR GROUNDBREAKER AWARD
Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco Poet Laureate, 2021; Teacher and Activist

FICTION
Tell Me, Signora, Ann Harleman, Elixir Press
The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, Caroline Kim, University of Pittsburgh Press
A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth, Daniel Mason, Little, Brown and Company
Only the River, Anne Raeff, Counterpoint
The Son of Good Fortune, Lysley Tenorio, Ecco/HarperCollins

POETRY
Indigo, Ellen Bass, Copper Canyon Press
Piñata Theory, Alan Chazaro, Black Lawrence Press
Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), Judy Halebsky, University of Arkansas Press
Bonfire Opera, Danusha Laméris, University of Pittsburgh Press
Storage Unit for the Spirit House, Maw Shein Win, Omnidawn
Transformer, Kathleen Winter, The Word Works

CREATIVE NONFICTION
Try to Get Lost: Essays on Travel and Place, Joan Frank, University of New Mexico Press
Mobile Home: A Memoir in Essays, Megan Harlan, The University of Georgia Press
Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose, Kay Ryan, Grove Press
Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir, Rebecca Solnit, Viking
Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism, Elizabeth Tallent, Harper

GENERAL NONFICTION
Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa, Marilyn Chase, Chronicle Books
Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy, Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, W.W. Norton
The Forests of California: A California Field Atlas, Obi Kaufmann, Heyday
American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland, Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Graywolf Press
Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism, Lawrence Rosenthal, The New Press

CALIFORNIA TRANSLATION
California Translation in Poetry
Plagios/Plagiarisms, Ulalume González de León, translated by Terry Ehret, John Johnson, and Nancy J. Morales, from the Spanish, Sixteen Rivers Press
Etudes: A Rilke Recital, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Art Beck, from the German, Shanti Arts Publishing
My Village: Selected Poems 1972-2014, Wu Sheng, translated by John Balcom, from the Chinese, Zephyr Press

California Translation in Prose
Heaven and Earth, Paolo Giordano, translated by Anne Milano Appel, from the Italian, Pamela Dorman Books/Viking
Surrender, Ray Loriga, translated by Carolina De Robertis, from the Spanish, Mariner Books
Bezoar and Other Unsettling Stories, Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, from the Spanish, Seven Stories Press
Savage Kiss, Roberto Saviano, translated by Antony Shugaar, from the Italian, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Nine Moons, Gabriela Wiener, translated by Jessica Powell, from the Spanish, Restless Books

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Younger Readers
The Good Song, Alexandria Giardino, illustrated by Penelope Dullaghan, Cameron Kids
You Matter, Christian Robinson, Atheneum Books for Young Readers
A Book for Escargot, Dashka Slater, illustrated by Sydney Hanson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers

Middle Grade
Orphan Eleven, Gennifer Choldenko, Wendy Lamb Books
The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane, Kate O’Shaughnessy, Knopf Books for Young Readers
Land of the Cranes, Aida Salazar, Scholastic Press

Young Adult
We Are Not Free, Traci Chee, HMH Books for Young Readers
Dark and Deepest Red, Anna-Marie McLemore, Feiwel and Friends
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Candlewick

Northern California reviewers and editors, members of Northern California Book Reviewers, select the awards. All of the nominated books, the NCBR Recommended Reading List of Books Published in 2020, will be acknowledged and celebrated at the ceremony.

Photo by Carlos Puma.

Category: Arts | Books and Literature

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.