Columbus writer and poet, Hanif Abdurraqib, has emerged winner in the just-announced Ohioana Book Awards for A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance.
According to The Columbus Dispatch, Abdurraqib’s book also won this year’s Carnegie Medal. His previous works include the 2016 poetry collection “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much” and the 2017 essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.”
Anthony Doerr, author of the novel “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” is also a winner.
Doerr, whose previous novel was “All the Light We Cannot See,” is a native of Cleveland.
Doerr’s winner in the fiction category, “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” is an ambitious novel that weaves five stories ranging over time from 15th-century Constantinople far into the future.
Ohioana Book Awards 2022: Other winners
The additional 2022 winners are Brian Alexander in the category of about Ohio or an Ohioan for his book, “The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town”; Felicia Zamora, poetry, for “I Always Carry My Bones”; Jasmine Warga, middle grade and young adult literature, for “The Shape of Thunder”; and Andrea Wang, juvenile literature, for “Watercress,” which also won the 2022 Caldecott Medal for most distinguished picture book.
Winner of the readers’ choice award is Manuel Iris for his book “The Parting Present/Lo que se ira,” his book of poems based on his life experiences.
Louise Ling Edwards is the winner of the Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant awarded to an Ohio writer age 30 or younger who has yet to publish a book. Edwards is an essayist and poet who graduated from Oberlin College and has a master’s degree from The Ohio State University. She writes about living as a biracial and bisexual woman as well as her experiences living in China’s Shanxi Province for two years.
The 2000 winner of the Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant was Anthony Doerr, then 26 years old.
