2020 Connecticut Book Awards Finalists

Connecticut Center for the Book is pleased to announce finalists for the 2020 Connecticut Book Awards.

The awards recognize and honor authors and illustrators who have created the best books in or about our state in the past year.Between three and five finalists have been selected in each of five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Books for Young Readers (broken into three subcategories: Picture Books, Fiction, and Nonfiction). Five judges per category read each entry and reviewed works using rigorous criteria. The finalists are listed below.FINALISTS for 2019 (in alphabetical order by author’s last name)* Indicates a Spirit of Connecticut Nominee as well.FINALISTS for 2020 (in alphabetical order by author’s last name)NonfictionMotherland – Elissa Altman, Ballantine BooksCitizen Outlaw – Charles Barber, Ecco/HarperCollinsSol LeWitt, A Life of Ideas – Lary Bloom, Wesleyan University PressAhab’s Rolling Sea, A Natural History of Moby-Dick – Richard J. King, The University of Chicago PressYale Needs Women, How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant – Anne Gardiner Perkins, SourcebooksPoetryWithout My Asking – Robert Cording, CavenKerry PressExuberance – Dolores Hayden, Red Hen PressPeripheral Vision – Susan Kinsolving, Red Hen Pressmouthbrooders – Amy Nawrocki, Homebound PublicationsAfterswarm – Margot Schilpp, Carnegie Mellon University PressThe Fire in Hand – Karen Torop, Antrim HouseFictionThe Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna – Juliet Grames, Ecco/HarperCollinsHow Fires End – Marco Rafalà, Little AOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong, Penguin PressYoung ReadersFictionThe Tornado – Jake Burt, Macmillan, Feiwel and FriendsNew Kid – Jerry Craft, HarperCollins Children’s BooksRuby in the Sky – Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo, Farrar. Straus Giroux Books for Young ReadersSearching for Lottie – Susan L. Ross, Holiday HouseNonfictionSuperlative Birds – Leslie Bulion, Peachtree Publishers, Inc.What You Eat – Valorie Fisher, ScholasticI See Sea Food, Sea Creatures that Look Like Food – Jenna Grodzicki, Lerner Publishing GroupTitan and the Wild Boars – Susan Hood, HarperCollinsPicture BooksWinter Cats – Janet Lawler, Author, Albert Whitman & CompanyEsther’s Gragger: A Toyshop Tale of Purim – Martha Seif Simpson, Author, Wisdom Tales PressThe Night Is Yours – Abdul-Razak Zachariah, Dial Books for Young Readers2020 Spirit of Connecticut FinalistsNonfictionForever Seeing New Beauties, The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams – Eve M. Kahn, Wesleyan University PressFictionOld Newgate Road – Keith Scribner, Alfred A. KnopfYoung ReadersVenture Smith’s Colonial Connecticut – Elizabeth Normen, CT ExploredPoetryThe Breach – David Leff, Homebound PublicationsThe 2020 Connecticut Book Awards, a program of the Connecticut Center for the Book, an affiliate program of the Library of Congress and a core program of Connecticut Humanities, will be held virtually at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 15, 2020.