Washington State Book Award
The Washington State Book Awards is a literary awards program presented annually in recognition of notable books written by Washington authors in the previous year. The program was established in 1967 as the Governor's Writers Awards. Each year, up to ten outstanding books of any genre, which have been written by Washington authors in the previous year are recognized with awards based on literary merit, lasting importance, and overall quality of the publication.
History
When the Governor's Writers Awards was established in 1967, it was based at the Washington State Library in Olympia. In 2001, the Washington Center for the Book based at the Seattle Public Library took over the administration of the program, renaming it as the Washington State Book Awards.In 2005, an additional category was added to represent children's books. Since established, two children's books are honored each year with the Scandiuzzi Children's Book Awards. One book is honored for picture books, while the other for middle grades and young adults.
In 2006, the Center for the Book divided the entire awards program into categories, significantly reducing the number of awards presented. From 2006 through 2010, the genres of History and Biography formed one category. In 2011, Biography was regrouped with Memoir, while History was regrouped with General Nonfiction. In 2013, the categories encompass General Nonfiction, Biography and Memoir, Fiction, Poetry, and two to four Scandiuzzi Children's Books Awards. As of 2020, there are five categories for adults and three categories for books for youth.
In 2017, the Washington Center for the Book became a joint partnership of the Washington State Library and The Seattle Public Library. The Washington State Book Awards continue as a project for the Center for the Book.
Washington State Book Award winners and finalists
2000s
Between 2002 and 2004, the award was presented to a group of books rather than to a single winner with a selection of finalists.| Year | Author | Title |
| 2002 | Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World | |
| 2002 | ' | |
| 2002 | Whale Talk | |
| 2002 | Blue Dusk: New and Selected Poems: 1951-2001 | |
| 2002 | Swimming Toward the Ocean | |
| 2002 | Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds: Notes from a Northwest Year | |
| 2002 | Motiba's Tattoos: A Granddaughter's Journey from America Into Her Indian Family's Past | |
| 2002 | Cool, Calm and Collected: Poems, 1960-2000 | |
| 2002 | Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret | |
| 2002 | Northern Haida Master Carvers | |
| 2003 | Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art | |
| 2003 | Red Delta: Fighting for Life at the End of the Colorado River | |
| 2003 | Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary | |
| 2003 | Perma Red | |
| 2003 | Under the Quilt of Night | |
| 2003 | ' | |
| 2003 | Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back | |
| 2003 | Wonderful Tricks: Stories | |
| 2003 | ' | |
| 2003 | ' | |
| 2004 | Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging | |
| 2004 | Range of Glaciers: The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range | |
| 2004 | Rodzina | |
| 2004 | ' | |
| 2004 | ' | |
| 2004 | Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America | |
| 2004 | ||
| 2004 | King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon | |
| 2004 | Visible Bones: Journey Across Time in the Columbia River Country | |
| 2004 | Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls |
In 2005, the Washington State Book Awards were separated into categories, and individual winners were selected.
General Books
Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award
Fiction
General Nonfiction
History/Biography
Poetry
2010s
Biography/Memoir
Fiction
General Nonfiction
History/Biography
History/General nonfiction
Poetry
Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award
2020s
Biography/Memoir (See General Nonfiction/Biography or Creative Nonfiction/Memoir from 2023)
In 2023, this category was split up and merged with two others: Biography joined General Nonfiction to become General Nonfiction/Biography, and Memoir joined Creative Nonfiction to become Creative Nonfiction/Memoir.Creative Nonfiction (Creative Nonfiction/Memoir from 2023)
In 2023, this category was expanded from Creative Nonfiction to become Creative Nonfiction/Memoir.| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
| 2020 | Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy | Winner | ||
| 2020 | Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions | Finalists | ||
| 2020 | ' | Finalists | ||
| 2020 | Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's | Finalists | ||
| 2020 | and Theresa Warburton | Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers | Finalists | |
| 2021 | Think Black | Winner | ||
| 2021 | , curator | Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures | Finalists | |
| 2021 | Nature Obscura: A City's Hidden Natural World | Finalists | ||
| 2021 | Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature edited | Finalists | ||
| 2021 | Every Penguin in the World: A Quest to See Them All | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | ' | Winner | ||
| 2022 | , Tamiko Nimura, art by Ross Ishikawa, Matt Sasaki | We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration | Finalists | |
| 2022 | Readying to Rise: Essays | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | White Magic: Essays | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk | Winner | ||
| 2023 | Ma and Me: A Memoir | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | Fearlessly Different | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | Where the Language Lives: Vi Hilbert and the Gift of Lushootseed | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City | Winner | ||
| 2024 | Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | 101 Horror Books to Read Before You're Murdered | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | The Fine Art of Camouflage | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | Touching the Art | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | We Are Not Strangers | Finalists | ||
| 2025 | Tessa Hulls | Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir | Winner | |
| 2025 | Lawrence Ingrassia | A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Susan Lieu | The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Steve Duda | River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe | Thunder Song: Essays | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Simone Gorrindo | The Wives | Finalists |
Fiction
General Nonfiction (General Nonfiction/Biography from 2023)
In 2023, this category was expanded from General Nonfiction to become General Nonfiction/Biography.| Year | Author | Title | Result | |
| 2020 | , text by Eric Scigliano, with Dr. Robert Max Holmes, Dr. Susan Natali, and Dr. John Schade | ' | Winner | |
| 2020 | , illustrated by Ronald Otts Bolisay | Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World | Finalists | |
| 2020 | Olmsted in Seattle: Creating a Park System for a Modern City | Finalists | ||
| 2020 | Seattle Walk Report: An Illustrated Walking Tour through 23 Seattle Neighborhoods | Finalists | ||
| 2020 | Museum of History & Industry and Clara Berg | Seattle Style: High Fashion/High Function | Finalists | |
| 2021 | Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 edited | Winner | ||
| 2021 | Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During the Crisis | Finalists | ||
| 2021 | ' | Finalists | ||
| 2021 | Finalists | |||
| 2021 | Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and Its Shifting Legacy in the American West | Finalists | ||
| 2021 | Pieometry: Modern Tart Art and Pie Design for the Eye and the Palate | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home | Winner | ||
| 2022 | Coming Home to Nez Perce Country: The Niimíipuu Campaign to Repatriate Their Exploited Heritage | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | Fear No Man: Don James, the '91 Huskies, and the Seven-Year Quest for a National Football Championship | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American | Finalists | ||
| 2022 | Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | The Wok: Recipes and Techniques | Winner | ||
| 2023 | I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | Northwest Know-How: Beaches | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth | Finalists | ||
| 2023 | Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World: A History | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them | Winner | ||
| 2024 | Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from Behind the Handlebars | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | Salmon, Cedar, Rock & Rain: Washington's Olympic Peninsula | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | Stomp and Shout: R&B and the Origins of Northwest Rock and Roll | Finalists | ||
| 2024 | Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility | Finalists | ||
| 2025 | Ijeoma Oluo | Be A Revolution | Winner | |
| 2025 | David Moskowitz | Big River: Resilience and Renewal in the Columbia Basin | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Ashley Rodriguez | Field Notes from a Fungi Forager | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Seth Zuckerman & Kirk Hanson | A Forest of Your Own: The Pacific Northwest Handbook of Ecological Forestry | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Lynne Peeples | The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms | Finalists | |
| 2025 | Anna Letitia Zivarts | When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency | Finalists |