Connecticut Book Awards 2020 finalists
By Susan Dunne
A biography of Hartford native Sol LeWitt, a chronicle of the introduction of women to Yale University, and the first novel written by MacArthur “genius” grant winner Ocean Vuong, who grew up in Hartford and Glastonbury, are among the finalists in the 2020 Connecticut Book Awards.
The Connecticut
Center for the Book and Connecticut Humanities on Wednesday announced the finalists for the prizes, an annual honor bestowed on authors and illustrators who live in or are from the Nutmeg State, and books about Connecticut.
The Bruce Fraser “Spirit of Connecticut” Award, named after the longtime Connecticut Humanities director, is a competition that includes many genres of book, awarding one that “celebrates Connecticut’s sense of place.” Among those nominees are biographies of Hartford impressionist painter Mary Rogers Williams; and a story about Venture Smith, a slave who purchased his freedom and lived in Haddam Neck.
The awards will be bestowed virtually on Oct. 1. 5 at 6 p.m. at CTCenterfortheBook.org. Here are the finalists.
”Motherland” by Elissa Altman
”Citizen Outlaw” by Charles Barber
”Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas” by Lary Bloom
”Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of MobyDick” by Richard J. King
”Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant” by Anne Gardiner Perkins
”Without My Asking” by Robert Cording
”Exuberance” by Dolores Hayden
”Peripheral Vision” by Susan Kinsolving
”mouthbrooders” by Amy
Nawrocki
”Afterswarm” by Margot Schilpp
”The Fire in Hand” by Karen Torop
”The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna” by Juliet Grames
”How Fires End” by Marco Rafalà
”On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong
”The Tornado” by Jake Burt
”New Kid” by Jerry Craft ”Ruby in the Sky” by Jeanne Zulick Ferruolo
”Searching for Lottie” by Susan L. Ross
”Superlative Birds” by Leslie Bulion
”What You Eat” by Valorie Fisher
”I See Sea Food: Sea Creatures that Look Like Food” by Jenna Grodzicki
”Titan and the Wild Boars” by Susan Hood
”Winter Cats” by Janet Lawler, illustrated by Ela Smietanka
”Esther’s Gragger: A Toyshop Tale of Purim” by Martha Seif Simpson, illustrated by D. Yael Bernhard
”The Night Is Yours” by Abdul-Razak Zachariah, illustrated by Katurah A. Bobo
Nonfiction: “Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams” by Eve M. Kahn
Fiction: “Old Newgate Road” by Keith Scribner
Yo u n g Readers: “Venture Smith’s Colonial Connecticut” by Elizabeth Normen
Poetry: “The Breach” by David Leff.