Oregon Book Awards Author Tour: Corvallis
A reading featuring some of the 2026 finalists in Creative Nonfiction:
Judith Barrington, Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs (Oregon State University Press)
Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, Holding: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts (Steerforth)
Wayne Scott, The Maps They Gave Us: One Marriage Reimagined (Black Lawrence Press)
Lidia Yuknavitch, Reading the Waves (Riverhead Books)
Judith Barrington
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.
Karleigh Frisbie Brogan
Originally from Northern California, where the events of her debut memoir HOLDING mostly take place, Karleigh Frisbie Brogan’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. She is a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellow and a 2022 Rona Jaffe Scholar. She holds an MFA from Portland State University. She is also a grocer.
Wayne Scott
Wayne Scott’s writing has appeared in The Sun, Poets and Writers, The Psychotherapy Networker, Huffington Post, and The Oregonian, among others. His New York Times essay, “Two Open Marriages in One Small Room” (January 2020) was adapted for the Modern Love podcast and read by Edoardo Ballerini (summer 2021), then “dutchified” for Modern Love (Amsterdam), the television series, in 2022. He was a Tin House Fellow in 2019. He is a psychotherapist and teacher in Portland, Oregon.
Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of the novels The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and Dora: A Headcase, the story collection Verge, and the memoir The Chronology of Water. Her latest book is Thrust. She is the recipient of two Oregon Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
