Orion Announces Finalists for Book Award: It's True, No Fiction

Orion magazine today announced the finalists for the 2009 Orion Book Award, an annual prize launched in 2007 to recognize books of fiction and nonfiction published in the previous year "that deepen our connection to the natural world, present new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieve excellence in writing." They are Amy Irvine for her memoir Trespass (North Point Press), Robert Macfarlane for his travelogue The Wild Places (Penguin) James Gustave Speth for his nonfiction book The Bridge at the End of the World (Yale University Press), Ginger Strand for her historical study Inventing Niagara (Simon and Schuster), and Terry Tempest Williams for her nonfiction book Finding Beauty in a Broken World (Pantheon).

The finalists were chosen from more than sixty nominations put forward by the board of advisors of the Orion Society, the nonprofit that publishes Orion; the magazine's contributing editors; and "a select number of colleagues." While plenty of good novels didn't make it to the finalist level, including Ron Rash's Serena, Kim Barnes's A Country Called Home (Knopf), and Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country (Modern Library), readers can still vote for any of the nominees, including the finalists, in the 2009 Readers' Choice. Just don't expect to find any poetry on the list: Despite the fact that there are plenty of poetry collections that deepen our connection to the natural world (Jeffrey Yang's An Aquarium comes to mind; post a comment with others below) they aren't eligible for the Orion Book Award. 

Unlike some sponsoring organizations that stretch the suspense longer than Oscar season, the Orion Society will announce the winner in just one week, on March 27. The winners and finalists will be honored at a public event in New York City on April 15.