Last night at the downtown Library, the 2019 Washington State Book Awards were announced and celebrated in a big old bookish jamboree. This year's list of nominees was the finest in recent memory; the judges must have been under tremendous pressure to select a single winner from each category. It really, truly, was an honor to just be nominated this year, because it placed you in company with the best authors this state has to offer. But because you can't have an award without a winner, here's this year's list of honorees:

Fiction

So Lucky by Nicola Griffith (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Read our review of So Lucky, and read an interview we published with Griffith on the very first day we published.

Poetry

Instruments of the True Measure by Laura Da’ (University of Arizona Press)

Laura Da' was our Poet in Residence for November, 2018. Read our interview with her, or the five poems we published during her residency:

• Passive Voice
• Refusal of the Return
• Centaur Culture
• Metes and Bounds
• Timber Scribe

Biography/Memoir

Arctic Solitaire by Paul Souders (Mountaineers Books)

Nonfiction

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Seal Press)

Tatiana Gill wrote and drew a graphical review of So You Want to Talk About Race for us, and Christine Marie Larsen also featured Olou as a subject in The Portrait Gallery.

Picture Books

All Are Welcome, illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman (Knopf Books for Young Readers)

Books for Young Readers (ages 6 and up)

Peanut Butter and Jelly, written and illustrated by Ben Clanton (Tundra Books)

Middle Grade (ages 8 and up)

Winterhouse by Ben Guterson (Christy Ottaviano Books/Henry Holt)

Young Adult (ages 12 and up)

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough (Dutton Books for Young Readers)