I think it's sad that people like Chang-rae Lee and Peter Ho Davies have now since moved. This year's crop of nominees also includes creative-writing teachers such as Oregon State University's Tracy Daugherty and Ehud Havazelet in the fiction category. But Oregon's literary mainstays are also well represented. Barry Lopez, the winner of the very first Oregon Book Award for nonfiction, is again nominated, this year for his book About This Life . And then there is Oregon's favorite prankster, Kesey, who may provide some outlandish antics at the event.
People watch the Academy Awards to see how skinny the actresses have become.
In Portland, ordinary people attend the Oregon Book Awards to rub shoulders with the glittering literati before they move away. That dreamy quality I remember was innocence. Now Portland is more modern and of this world. The same can be said for the Oregon Book Awards.