Connecticut Authors of Varied Genres Stand Out in 2022 Connecticut Book Awards

The 2022 Connecticut Book Awards Winners have been selected by the Connecticut Center for the Book. The awards recognize the best books of 2021 which are either about Connecticut or by authors and illustrators from Connecticut. One hundred thirteen books were submitted among all categories and each went through a rigorous review process to select the finalists and winners in each category.

"The review committees were very impressed with the quality of submissions," said Lisa Comstock, Director of Connecticut Center for the Book. "My heartiest congratulations to all the finalists and winners for a job well done.”

Categories include Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Books for Young Readers, as well as a special category called the Bruce Fraser “Spirit of Connecticut” award, in memory of longtime Connecticut Humanities director Bruce Fraser, celebrating Connecticut’s sense of place.

This year’s winners and honorable mention are as follows:

NONFICTION:  Squirrel Hill | Mark Oppenheimer | New Haven | Penguin Random House

FICTION:  Goliath | Tochi Onyebuchi | New Haven | Tor

POETRY:  The Glass Globe | Margaret Gibson | Preston | LSU Press

BRUCE FRASER “SPIRIT OF CONNECTICUT”:

HONORABLE MENTION:  All Girls | Emily Layden | Albany, NY | St. Martin’s Press

Author Mark Oppenheimer has taught at Stanford, Wellesley, and Yale, where since 2006 he has directed the Yale Journalism Initiative. He lives with his family in New Haven.  His book, a piercing portrait of the struggles and triumphs of one of America’s renowned Jewish neighborhoods in the wake of unspeakable tragedy, highlights the hopes, fears, and tensions all Americans must confront on the road to healing.  Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, is one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in the country, known for its tight-knit community and the profusion of multigenerational families. On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven Jews who were worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill–the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history.

Connecticut resident Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of Goliath. His previous fiction includes Riot Baby, a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Awards and winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Ignyte Award for Best Novella, and the World Fantasy Award; the Beasts Made of Night series; and the War Girls series. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and elsewhere. His non-fiction includes the book (S)kinfolk and has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places.

Margaret Gibson, the poet laureate of Connecticut from 2019 to 2022, is the author of thirteen books of poems. With The Glass Globe, Gibson completes a trilogy distinguished by its meditative focus on the author’s experience of her late husband’s Alzheimer’s disease. In this new collection, she blends personal bereavement with reflections the ongoing global crisis wrought by climate change. Gibson’s poems personalize the vastness of climate catastrophe while simultaneously enlarging personal grief beyond the limits of self-absorption, one recent review pointed out.

This year's awards event took place at the Hartford Public Library.  (A recording of the event is available on YouTube.)

Carrying on the tradition of these award-winning wonderful achievements, the Connecticut Center for the Book is offering a four-part series of writing workshops beginning on October 27, 2022 which will be led by Connecticut authors.

BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

Picture Books – Fiction

Soul Food Sunday | Winsome Hudson-Bing | Ledyard | Abrams Books

Picture Books – Nonfiction

Walrus Song | Janet Lawler | Farmington | Candlewick Press

Middle Grade – Nonfiction

Fairy Tale Science | Sarah Albee | Watertown | Author | Odd Dot

Middle Grade – Fiction

To Tell You the Truth | Beth Vrabel | Canton | Simon & Schuster

Fiction – Young Adult

The Secret Life of Kitty Granger | G. D. Falksen | Hamden | Lerner Publishing Group