On May 11, 2024, authors, poets, illustrators, designers, publishers, and avid readers came together for a night to celebrate some of Oklahoma’s most talented literary standouts. Kelley Riha, president of the Friends of the Oklahoma Center for the Book, led the evening as the master of ceremonies. The Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to award-winning author, poet, filmmaker, and playwright LeAnne Howe, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. 

Books are recognized each year for outstanding work in fiction, non-fiction, children and young adult, poetry, and the design, illustration, and photography combined category. To be eligible for consideration, books must be written by an Oklahoman, about the state, or have an Oklahoma theme. This year, the Oklahoma Center for the Book received 179 entries with 28 chosen as finalists.

The evening would not have been possible without the generous support of the sponsors: Bob Burke, Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, Adam and Betty Falato, Full Circle Books, and the Oklahoma Department of Libraries.

Design: Otis W. Leader: The Ideal American Doughboy
designed by Jackson Davis
Chickasaw Press

Davis provides the reader an appealing design that features a clean, precise layout with straight, even margins. An easy-to-read color map appears at the front of the book for reference. The chapter headings are uniform, each with a postmark showcasing a particular date, year, and location that highlights Leader’s travel during the war. Images appear in the back section of the book entitled “Reconstructing the Life of an American War Hero.” These images include photographs of Leader before, during, and after the war, as well as newspaper clippings, Leader’s journal, and correspondence letters. A two-page color layout of Leader’s military medals are also included. Davis has been employed with the Chickasaw Nation as a senior graphic artist since 2022.

Illustration: The Florentine Poet
cover and jacket design by Carl Brune
interior design by William Bernhardt
illustrated by Brian Call
Babylon Books

This exquisitely designed and illustrated book serves as a reflection of the author’s love letter to poetry, words, and writing. Everything about this book is appealing. The book comes in an elegant blue case. Both the case and the hardback cover feature the book’s title in engraved gold lettering. The delightful illustrations located throughout the book bring to life the main character, Pietro Begnini’s quest to marry his beloved Sophia and become a poet. Bernhardt is the author of more than sixty books. He twice won the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction for Perfect Justice (1995) and Dark Justice (2000). The Oklahoma Center for the Book honored him with the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Brune won the Oklahoma Book Award for design for Woven Worlds: Basketry from the Clark Field Collection (2002); OKC: Second Time Around (2007); and Oklahoma: A Portrait of America (2008). He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Call is an illustrator and serves as an instructor at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He lives in Ammon, Idaho.

Listen
by Sheldon Russell
Cynren Press

Lack of opportunities has forced Liam to take a job with the Federal Writers Project. He is assigned to collect stories of rural life for the Library of Congress in a hot, poverty-stricken Dust Bowl town in Oklahoma. He soon interviews Eden Sawyer, a talented, hardworking and determined woman who dreams of becoming an artist. Eden leads Liam to an unexpecting, unimagined love. But as he interviews more townspeople, Liam’s probing questions steer him into danger, threatening to reveal untold secrets, unsolved mysteries, and unfulfilled passions. Will one man’s simmering jealousy and thwarted ambition bring Liam and Eden’s story to an abrupt and deadly end? Russell has twice won an Oklahoma Book Award for fiction for Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush (2007) and The Bridge Troll Murders (2018). The Oklahoma Center for the Book honored him with the distinguished Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023. Russell and his wife, Nancy, reside in Waynoka, Oklahoma.

Otis W. Leader: The Ideal American Doughboy
by Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer
Chickasaw Press

Sawyer examines the life of war hero Otis W. Leader, a thirty-five-year-old widower of Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Irish descent, who joined the United States Army after he was accused of being a German spy. Sawyer contends Leader enlisted to redeem his reputation and protect his country. During his time at war, he completed daring acts of heroism that earned him such honors as the Croix de Guerre, two Silver Stars, a Congressional Gold Medal, and a Purple Heart. Moreover, he was selected among a crowd of soldiers to represent the “Ideal American Doughboy.” Sawyer is a story archeologist, who digs up shards of past lives, hopes, and truths, and pieces them together for readers today. She is the author of Anumpa Warrior: Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I. She lives in Canton, Texas.

Sand: At the Mercy of Wind
by Karen Kay Knauss
Peach Tree Press

In this wonderfully woven set of poems, Knauss compares the human experience with a helpless grain of sand at the mercy of wind. During life’s journey, events beyond our control gradually break us down, causing us to feel smaller and smaller, until at times, we seem no more significant than a grain of sand. However, as change and personal transformation occurs, a realization sets in that not everything is out of our control—or entirely in it. Oklahoma Poet Laureate Carol Hamilton states, “With language both tender and precise, Knauss carries the reader along, so we may experience reality in a new and deeper way.” Knauss is the author of fourteen poetry collections. She was selected as an Oklahoma Book Award finalist in poetry for her books Red Corn Moon (2020) and Cream Lines (2023). Knauss lives in Blanchard, Oklahoma.

Gwen Didn’t Care
by Gwendolyn F. Mukes
WF Publications

Gwen didn’t care that she had yucky, lumpy porridge for breakfast; or the fact that her legs were dirty; or that her mama fussed at her while combing her hair. Gwen was too excited! She was going to the Oklahoma City Zoo. But when she got to the zoo, she had to use a different entrance gate, restroom, and water fountain. She couldn’t even eat at the zoo diner. Her mom said it was because of “Old Jim Crow.” Gwen wanted to know who was this person called “Old Jim Crow,” and what did he look like. Even the animals got involved trying to figure out who was this crow named Jim. When Gwen learns the truth, she began to wonder what the world would look like if Jim Crow disappeared. Gwen found out that she really did care! In 1958 Mukes along with twelve other youths and their advisor, Mrs. Clara Luper, changed the course of history with the first Sit-In Movement in Oklahoma City. Mukes later became a revered educator. She now splits her time between California and Oklahoma.

Born in Edmond, Oklahoma, Howe is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation. She attended Oklahoma State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English, and she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Vermont College of Norwich University. Howe is an author, playwright, scholar, and poet. She currently serves as Eidson Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia, where she connects literature, Indigenous knowledge, Native histories, and expressive cultures in her work. Her scholarly writings include Native and Indigenous literatures, performance studies, film, and Indigeneity.

Howe’s books include Shell Shaker (2001); Evidence of Red: Poems and Prose (2005); Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (2007); Seeing Red—Hollywood‘s Pixeled Skins, American Indians and Film (2013); Choctalking on Other Realities (2013); and Savage Conversations (2019). Her plays include The Big PowWow (1987); Indian Radio Days (1998); and The Mascot Opera (2008). Moreover, her film credits include co-editor on Seeing Red—Hollywood‘s Pixeled Skins: American Indians and Film; co-producer on Playing Pastime: American Indian Fast-Pitch Softball and Survival; and screenwriter and on-camera narrator for Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire.

Howe is the recipient of the 2022 Richard Beale Davis Award for Distinguished Lifetime Service to Southern Letters by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature; a United States Artists (USA) Ford Fellow, Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, American Book Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and she was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar to Jordan. In October 2015, Howe received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western Literature Association, (WLA); and in 2014 she received the Modern Languages Association Inaugural Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages for Choctalking on Other Realities. She shares a Native and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) award for literary criticism with eleven other scholars for Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, named one of the ten most influential books of the first decade of the twenty-first century for indigenous scholarship, (2011). Howe has lectured nationally and internationally throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan.