Oregon Book Awards Fiction Finalists Reading

Miriam Gershow is the author of Closer, Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her writing is featured in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award.

Victor Lodato is a playwright and the author of the novel Mathilda Savitch, winner of the PEN Center USA Award for fiction, Edgar and Lucy and Honey. His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and Best American Short Stories. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Victor was born and raised in New Jersey and currently divides his time between Ashland, Oregon, and Tucson, Arizona.

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the national-bestselling novel We Were the Universe, number two on TIME Magazine’s Best Books of 2024 and a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief’s dismantling power.” Parsons’s debut collection, Black Light, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. We Were the Universe was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was a best book of 2024 in Elle, TIME, Oprah Daily, Nylon, Marie Claire, Marie Claire UK, and others. Parsons lives with her partner and children in Portland.

Charlie J. Stephens is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race writer from the Pacific Northwest. Born and raised in Salem, Oregon, Charlie has lived all over the U.S. as a bike messenger, wilderness guide, high school English teacher, and seasonal shark diver (for educational purposes only). Resident of Port Orford on the southern Oregon coast, they are the owner of Sea Wolf Books & Community Writing Center. Charlie’s short fiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Best Small Fictions Anthology, New World Writing, Original Plumbing/Feminist Press, and elsewhere. They are the author of the novel A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest. More at www.charliejstephenswriting.com.