2026 Oregon Book Awards Finalists Reading

Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist, and the author of Immaculate Conception. She plays with several ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and the Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy Award in 2021. Her debut novel, Natural Beauty, was a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction.

Judith Barrington is the author of two memoirs, five collections of poetry, two poetry chapbooks, and a bestselling book for writers. Her previous memoir Lifesaving won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir; it was published in German translation. Her poetry collections are Trying to Be an Honest Woman, History and Geography, Horses and the Human Soul, The Conversation, and Long Love: New and Selected Poems. Individual poems and memoirs have won numerous awards. Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, is used in classrooms and writing workshops across the U.S. and the U.K. and has been translated into 5 languages. Lifesaving and three poetry collections were finalists for the Oregon Book Award.

Joe Wilkins is the author of two novels, The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die; a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and five collections of poetry, including Pastoral, 1994, a current finalist for the Stafford/Hall Prize from the Oregon Book Awards, and When We Were Bird, winner of the 2017 Stafford/Hall Prize from the Oregon Book Awards. Born and raised on a sheep ranch north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana, he lives now with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon.

Jamie Mustard is a conceptual artist, artistic director, culturist and award winning writer including his work on art, imagery and the messaging of ideas. Jamie has worked in fine art, music, film and design. He produced the documentary, Showbiz is My Life, which was screened by Lincoln Center as one of the best films of the year upon its year of release. His literary memoir was written as a systematic deconstruction of his early life as a crime scene – Child X about being handed over at birth to a dark movement, was released at the end of July 2025. His graphic novel, HYBRED, set in a future-adjacent sci-fi, alternate reality Los Angeles of his youth will be published in the late Fall of 2025. His recent work of graphic literature, is a science fiction episodic work exploring the darkest reaches of humanity utilizing vivid imagery and fine art. Both books were conceived and art directed by Jamie. 

Growing up in severe poverty, illiteracy, abandonment and neglect in inner city Los Angeles, unable to write or even use a comma at age 20 he overcame obstacles to eventually graduate from The London School of Economics and Engalitcheff Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems (ICPES) at Georgetown University. In the fall of 2025, Jamie was invited as a guest of the Armenian government to present to the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Affairs. He was also a guest of the US Embassy in Armenia as the first to bring a new science on trauma as a biological injury to the Caucasus. 

Jamie is also the writer of The Iconist, A Kid’s Book about the Impossible and co-author of the groundbreaking book, The Invisible Machine on the biology of trauma.  

Jonathan Bach covers housing and commercial real estate for the Oregonian. He previously wrote for the Portland Business Journal, where his reporting on home-lending disparities received an honorable mention from the nonprofit Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Jonathan lives with his wife, Makenna, near Portland, Oregon.

Karen Thompson Walker is the author of The Dreamers, and The Age of Miracles, which was named a best book of the year by People, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Financial Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon. It was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and it was translated into twenty-seven languages. She was born and raised in San Diego and is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. Walker lives in Portland with her family, where she is a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon.

Rowan Kingsbury is an illustrator and storyteller dedicated to crafting wonderful and whimsical things. She loves to tell stories that fill people with warmth and elevate mundane moments into the memorable and magical. Raised in the evergreen state of Washington and graduating from the Pacific Northwest College of Art with a BFA in Illustration. Rowan now resides in Portland, Oregon, choosing to stay close to the rainy forests she spent her childhood exploring. Avery and the Fairy Circle is her debut graphic novel – inspired by the magic of those same forests. Besides doodling fairies and running her online shop, she also enjoys cooking up treats, wandering around local parks, and trying to find the nearest cat to bother.

Kevin Maloney is the author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Cult of Loretta, and the forthcoming story collection Horse Girl Fever. His writing has appeared in FENCE, HAD, Forever Magazine, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He lives in Portland.

Pronouns: any/all

Jennifer (JP) Perrine is the author of five award-winning books of poetry: Beautiful Outlaw, Again, The Body Is No Machine, In the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Their other recent work appears in Best Small Fictions, A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid Lit Collection, and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry. A two-time winner of Arts and Culture Diversity and Inclusion Awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, Perrine lives in Portland, Oregon, where they cohost the Incite: Queer Writers Read series, perform stand-up comedy, and work as the equity and racial justice program manager for Metro Parks and Nature.

Justin Hocking is the author of A Field Guide the Subterranean: A Memoir, and The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir, which won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the Pen Center USA Award for Nonfiction. He served as the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) from 2006–2014 and received the Willamette Writers Humanitarian Award for his work in writing, publishing, and literary outreach. He teaches creative writing in the MFA and BFA Programs at Portland State University.