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Back in person after two years, the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library gathered at the Ordway Center in St. Paul on Tuesday for the Minnesota Book Awards ceremony. The award celebrates local books in nine different categories. Among the winners are books that tackle gun violence, settler-colonial politics, and Native ecology while others delve into fantastical mystery, animal apology and zany young adult antics.
Acclaimed Dakota author Diane Wilson won her second Minnesota Book Award for her debut novel The Seed Keeper. The novel tells the story of a Dakota family struggling to preserve their way of life and their relationship to nature. Hampton Smith won the Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction with Confluence, which tells stories about and around Fort Snelling in the wider context of the state’s history. Douglas Kearney won the poetry award for Sho, a rhythmic poetry collection exploring Black vernacular.
Read interviews with all the nominated authors, and find the winners below.
Children’s Literature:
How to Apologize by David LaRochelle; Illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka
General Nonfiction:
The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic by Jillian Peterson and James Densley
Genre Fiction:
Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimemez
Memoir & Creative Nonfiction:
Watershed: Attending to Body and Earth in Distress by Ranae Lenor Hanson
Middle Grade Literature:
Long Lost by Jacqueline West
Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction:
Confluence: A History of Fort Snelling by Hampton Smith
Novel & Short Story:
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
Poetry:
Sho by Douglas Kearney
Young Adult Literature:
The Night When No One Had Sex by Kalena Miller
The ceremony also recognized and presented three previously announced awards.
2021 Kay Sexton Award:
Publisher Fiona McCrae, Graywolf Press
2022 Book Artist Award:
Book Artist and Printmaker, Cathy Ryan, Chronicle
2022 Hognander Minnesota History Award:
David Hugill, Settler Colonial City: Racism and Inequity in Postwar Minneapolis
