Northern California Book Awards

Recipients Since 1981

Celebrating books published by Northern California authors

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
1984   Mavis Jukes   Like Jake and Me
1985   Yoshiko Uchida   The Happiest Ending
1986   Gayle Pearson    Fish Friday
1987   Marilyn Sachs    Fran Ellen’s House
1988   Beverly Cleary   A Girl From Yamhill: A Memoir
1989   Esther Blanc    Berchick
1990   Ellen Kindt McKenzie    Stargone John
1991   Allen Say    Tree of Cranes
1992   Joe Cottonwood    Danny Ain’t
1993   Allen Say    Grandfather’s Journeys
1994   Karen Cushman    Catherine Called Birdy
1995   Peggy Rathmann    Officer Buckle and Gloria
1996   Nancy Farmer    A Girl Named Disaster
1997   Ji-Li Jiang    Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution
1998   Elizabeth Partridge    Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange
1999   Karen English    Francie
2000   Judd Winick    Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, And What I Learned
2001   An Na    A Step from Heaven
2002   Nancy Farmer    The House of the Scorpion
2003   Peggy Rathmann    The Day the Babies Crawled Away
2004   Gennifer Choldenko    Al Capone Does My Shirts
2005   Denys Cazet    The Perfect Pumpkin Pie
2006   Frank Portman    King Dork
2007   Elisa Kleven    The Apple Doll
2008   Pamela S. Turner    A Life in the Wild: George Schaller's Struggle to
                                               Save the Last Great Beasts
2009   Nina LaCour    Hold Still
2010   Lewis Buzbee    The Haunting of Charles Dickens
2011   Young Adult: Kim Culbertson    Instructions for a Broken Heart
          Younger Readers: Joan Dunning   Seabird in the Forest
2012    Young Adult: Lemony Snicket    “Who Could That Be at This Hour”
                                                           All the Wrong Questions series
          Younger Readers: Ashley Wolff     Baby Bear Sees Blue

POETRY
1982    Thom Gunn    The Passages of Joy
1983    Jack Marshall    Arriving on the Playing Fields of Paradise
1984    Czeslaw Milosz    The Separate Notebooks
1985    August Kleinzahler    Storm Over Hackensack
1986    William Dickey    The King of the Golden River
1987    Edward Kleinschmidt    Magnetism
1988    Philip Levine    A Walk with Tom Jefferson
1989    Adrienne Rich    Time’s Power
1990    Thomas Centolella    Terra Firma
1991    Czeslaw Milosz    Provinces: Poems 1987–1991
1992    Thom Gunn    The Man With Night Sweats
1993    Brenda Hillman    Bright Existence
1994    Jane Hirshfield    The October Palace
1995    Czeslaw Milosz    Facing the River
1996    William Dickey    The Education of Desire
1997    Diana O’Hehir    Spells For Not Dying Again
1998    Jacqueline Berger    The Mythologies of Danger
1999    Michael McClure    Touching the Edge
2000    Forrest Hamer    Middle Ear
2001    Jane Hirshfield    Given Sugar, Given Salt
2002    Jack Marshall    Gorgeous Chaos: New & Selected Poems 1965–2001
2003    Suji Kwock Kim    Notes from the Divided Country
2004    Lawrence Ferlinghetti    Americus I
2005    Brian Turner    Here, Bullet
2006    Nathaniel Mackey    Splay Anthem
2007    Robert Hass    Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005
2008    Rusty Morrison    the true keeps calm biding its story
2009    D.A. Powell    Chronic
2010    Camille T. Dungy    Suck on the Marrow
2011    Michael Palmer    Thread
2012    D.A. Powell    Useless Landscape: A Guide for Boys

GENERAL NONFICTION
1981    J.S. Holloway    And the World Came Rushing In
1982    Diane Johnson    Terrorists and Novelists
1983    Bruno Bettelheim    Freud and Man’s Soul
1984    Robert Hass   Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry
           Orville Schell    Modern Meat
1985    Paul Robinson Carolyn Wakeman    Opera and Ideas
           Yue Daiyun    To the Storm
1986    Alex Zwerdling    Virginia Woolf and the Real World
           William Finnegan    Crossing the Line
1987    Randy Shilts    And the Band Played On
1988    Timothy Ferris    Coming of Age in the Milky Way
1989    Peter Nabokov, Robert Easton    Native American Architecture
           Ronald Takaki    Strangers from a Different Shore
1990    Linda Neimann    Boomer—Railroad Memoirs
1991    Diane Wood Middlebrook    Anne Sexton, A Biography
           Susan Faludi    Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
1992    Susan Griffin    A Chorus of Stones
1993    Gerald Haslam, et al    The Central Valley, California’s Heartland
1994    Stewart Brand    How Buildings Learn
1995    Joe Kane    Savages
1996    Victor Davis Hanson    Fields Without Dreams
1997    Ted Gioia    The History of Jazz
1998    Adam Hochshild    King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed,
                                       Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
1999    Freeman House    Totem Salmon: Life Lessons From Another Species
2000    June Jordan    Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood
2001    Robert M. Sapolsky    A Primate’s Memoir
2002    Daniel Ellsberg    Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
           Richard Rodriguez    Brown: The Last Discovery of America
2003    Rebecca Solnit    River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge
                                        and the Technological Wild West
2004    Richard Steven Street    Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History
                                                of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913
                                                & Photographing Farmworkers in California
2005    Adam Hochschild    Bury the Chains:Prophets and Rebels
                                          in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
2006    Michael Pollan    The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A NaturalHistory of Four Meals
2007    Lisa Margonelli    Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
2008    Richard A. Muller    Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines
2009    Tamim Ansary    Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes
2010    Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson   Winner-Take-All Politics:
                                                               How Washington Made the Rich Richer
                                                               —And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
2011    Ian W. Toll    Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942
2012    Ozzie Zehner    Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy
                                       and the Future of Environmentalism

CREATIVE NONFICTION
2008    John Adams    Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life
2009    Dave Eggers    Zeitoun
2010    Rebecca Solnit    Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
2011    Mary Jo McConahay    Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey
                                             Among the People of the Rainforest
2012    Victoria Sweet    God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital,
                                       and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine

FICTION
1981    Alice Walker    You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down
1982    Gina Berriault    The Infinite Passion of Expectation
1983    Ron Loewinsohn    Magnetic Fields
1984    Harriet Doerr    Stones for Ibarra
1985    Molly Giles    Rough Translations
1986    Lynn Freed    Home Ground
1987    Herbert Wilner    The Quarterback Speaks to His God
1988    Alice Adams    Second Chances
           Pete Dexter    Paris Trout
           Ehud Havazelet    What is it Then Between Us?
1989    Amy Tan    The Joy Luck Club
1990    Ella Leffland    The Knight, Death and the Devil
1991    Ron Hansen    Mariette in Ecstasy
1992    Dorothy Allison    Bastard Out of Carolina
1993    Elizabeth Tallent    Honey: Stories
1994    Linda Raymond    Rocking the Babies
1995    Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni    Arranged Marriage
1996    Gina Berriault    Women in Their Beds
1997    Diane Johnson    Le Divorce
1998    Lan Samantha Chang    Hunger
1999    Alfredo Alfredo Véa    Gods Go Begging
2000    Michael Chabon    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2001    Paul LaFarge    Haussmann, or the Distinction
2002    Roger King    A Girl from Zanzibar (Novel)
           Daniel Coshnear    Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Short Fiction)
2003    Tobias Wolff    Old School (Novel)
           Julie Orringer    How to Breathe Underwater: Stories (Short Fiction)
2004    Andrew Sean Greer    The Confessions of Max Tivoli
2005    William T. Vollmann    Europe Central
2006    James Janko    Buffalo Boy and Geronimo
2007    Cristina García    A Handbook to Luck
2008    Sylvia Brownrigg    The Delivery Room
2009    Catherine Brady    The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories
2010    Michael Alenyikov    Ivan and Misha, stories
2011    Ernest J. Finney    Sequoia Gardens
2012    Jennifer DuBois    A Partial History of Lost Causes

TRANSLATION
Fiction
1985    Stephen Mitchell    Rainier Maria Rilke’s The Passages of Joy
1986    Stephen Mitchell & Chana Bloch    Yehuda Amichai’s Selected Poetry
            Czeslaw Milosz & Robert Hass    Czeslaw Milosz’s Unattainable Earth
            Reginald Zeinick    S.I. Kanatchikov’s A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia
1993    Jim Powell    Sappho: A Garland, Poems and Fragments of Sappho
1995    Zack Rogow (co-translator)   André Breton’s Earthlight
1996     Robert Alter    Genesis
2002    Margret Schaefer    Arthur Schnitzler’s Night Games
2003    Anne Milano Appel    Stefano Bortolussi’s Head Above Water
2004    Willis Barnstone    Antonio Machado’s Border of a Dream: Selected Poems
2005    John Balcom    Indigenous Writers of Taiwan:
                                    An Anthology of Stories, Essays, and Poems
2006    Brother Anthony, Young-Moo Kim, Gary Gach    Ko Un’s Flowers of a Moment
            Clare You & Richard Silberg    Ko Un’s The Three Way Tavern
2007    Carol Cosman    Albert Camus’s Exile and the Kingdom
2008    Katherine Silver    Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness
2009    John Balcom     Cao Naiquian’s There's Nothing I Can Do
                                    When I Think of You Late at Night
2010    David Frick    Jerzy Pilch’s A Thousand Peaceful Cities
2011    Anne O. Fisher    Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs
2012    Anne Milano Appel    Claudio Magris’s Blindly
Poetry
2009    Chana Bloch & Chana Kronfeld    Hovering at a Low Altitude:
                                                    The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch
2010    John Sakkis & Angelos Sakkis    Demostenes Agrafiotis’s Maribor
2011    Andrea Lingenfelter    Zhai Yongming’s The Changing Room
2012    Art Beck    Luxorius’s Opera Omnia

NCBR RECOGNITION AWARD
1984    Sierra Club Books
1987    Medea Benjamin & the IFPD    Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo
1989    Harriet Rohmer, Children’s Book Press
1990    William Turnbull & Jack Shoemaker, North Point Press
1994    Carl Thelander, Malcolm Margolin, Michael Cronan    Living on the Edge
1997    Poetry Flash, A Poetry Review & Literary Calendar for the West
1999    Overtime: Selected Poems by Philip Whalen, Edited by Michael Rothenberg
2000    California Fiction Series, University of California Press: Charlene Woodcock, Editor
2001    Valerie Walley, Random House Book Representative
2001    Distinguished Contribution to Literature & Culture: Czeslaw Milosz
2004    The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives
2005    Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan
2006    Veterans of War, Veterans of Peaceedited by Maxine Hong Kingston
2007    River of Words International Environmental Poetry & Art Contest for children K-12
2008    Paintings in Proust: A Visual Companion to “In Search of Lost Time” Eric Karpeles
2009    Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry Camille T. Dungy, ed.
2010    Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry
            edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa, Pireeni Sundaralingam
2011    Everything Is Its Own Reward, An All Over Coffee Collection, Paul Madonna
2012    Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here:
            Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5, 2007,
            Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of the Booksellers”
             edited by Beau Beausoleil & Deema Shehabi
2013    City Arts & Lectures

The Northern California Book Awards are presented and sponsored by Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, Center for the Art of Translation, Red Room (redroom.com), PEN West, Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco Public Library, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, and Readers Bookstore at the Main.

Winners will be announced at the Awards. Free admission; open to the public. For more information: Poetryflash.org, 510.525.5476, NCBR@poetryflash.org.