And The First Annual Orion Readers’ Choice Award
The Orion Book Award is conferred annually to an outstanding, literary, book-length work that is ecological in context and has as its foundation the human relationship with the natural world. This year Orion readers are invited to vote for their favorites in the first annual Orion Readers’ Choice Award.
Forty-three books have been nominated for the 2008 Orion Book Award (which goes to a book published in 2007). The selection committee for the 2008 Orion Book Award consists of Linda Hogan, Mark Kurlansky, Kathleen Dean Moore (chair), David Rothenberg, and Jennifer Sahn. The Readers’ Choice Award is up to you!
Voting for the Readers’ Choice Award will begin around March 15 with the announcement of finalists and close on March 31. The winners of both the 2008 Orion Book Award and the 2008 Orion Readers’ Choice Award will be announced in early April. The 2008 Orion Book Award will be presented on April 16 in New York City, along with four honorable mentions. There is a cash prize for the winning book and the honorable mentions, but not for the Readers’ Choice Award.
Check back frequently to follow the proceedings.
The 2007 Orion Book Award was given to Wild: An Elemental Journey, by Jay Griffiths (Jeremy P. Tarcher), with honorable mentions going to: The Lives of Rocks: Stories, by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin); Inferno, by Charles Bowden, photographs by Michael P. Berman (University of Texas Press); Returning to Earth, by Jim Harrison (Grove Press); and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (The Penguin Press).
Here is the complete list of nominees for the 2008 Orion Book Award:
- Ackerman, Diane, The Zookeeper’s Wife (Norton)
- Audeguy, Stephane, The Theory of Clouds (Harcourt)
- Barrett, Andrea, The Air We Breathe (Norton)
- Berger, John, Hold Everything Dear (Pantheon)
- Busch, Akiko, Nine Ways to Cross a River (Bloomsbury)
- Cannavo, Peter, The Working Landscape (MIT Press)
- Childs, Craig, House of Rain (Little, Brown)
- Cummins, Ann, Yellowcake: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin)
- Davis, Devra, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Basic Books)
- DeBuys, William, The Walk (Trinity University Press)
- Dillard, Annie, The Maytrees (HarperCollins )
- Doerr, Anthony, Four Seasons in Rome (Scribner’s)
- Finch, Robert, The Iambics of Newfoundland (Perseus)
- Fox, William, Making Time (Shoemaker & Hoard)
- Franklin, H. Bruce, The Most Important Fish in the Sea (Island Press)
- Gaard, Greta, The Nature of Home (University of Arizona Press)
- Gessner, David, Soaring with Fidel (Beacon Press)
- Hawken, Paul, Blessed Unrest (Viking)
- Hayashi, Robert, Haunted by Waters (University of Iowa Press)
- Jamie, Kathleen, Findings: Essays (Graywolf)
- Kalish, Mildred Armstrong, Little Heathens (Bantam)
- Kerasote, Ted, Merle’s Door (Harcourt)
- Kingsolver, Barbara, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (HarperCollins )
- Lane, John, Circling Home (University of Georgia Press)
- Lear, Linda, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (St. Martin’s)
- Masumoto, David, Heirlooms: Letters from a Peach Farmer (Heyday Books)
- McKibben, Bill, Deep Economy (Times Books)
- Nader, Ralph, The Seventeen Traditions (HarperCollins)
- Pancake, Ann, Strange as This Weather Has Been (Counterpoint)
- Petterson, Per, Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf)
- Plum, Syndey, Solitary Goose (University of Georgia Press)
- Porter, Jeff, Oppenheimer Is Watching Me (University of Iowa Press)
- Preston, Richard, The Wild Trees (Random House)
- Pyle, Robert Michael, Sky Time in Gray’s River (Houghton Mifflin)
- Rosenblum, Mort, Escaping Plato’s Cave (St. Martin’s Press)
- Schaller, George B., A Naturalist and Other Beasts (Sierra Club Books)
- Snyder, Gary, Back on the Fire (Shoemaker & Hoard)
- Solnit, Rebecca, Storming the Gates of Paradise (University of California Press)
- Tevis, Joni, The Wet Collection (Milkweed Editions)
- Tyson, Neil deGrasse, Death by Black Hole (Norton)
- Weidensaul, Scott, Of a Feather (Harcourt)
- Weisman, Alan, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books)
- Whitty, Julia, The Fragile Edge (Houghton Mifflin)