2013 Awards Short-List

	Blasphemy Sherman Alexie Alexie gives the reader a blazingly straight on view of Native life while at the same time suffusing his work with powerful humor that touches the tragedy of the human condition. Blasphemy is wide ranging, wildly entertaining, and heartfelt. -- PNBA Awards Committee Grove / Atlantic.
	The Art of Urban Sketching Gabriel Campanario We love our region, but that doesn't mean we don't want to see the world. This gorgeous book, filled with city sketches by over 80 artists, provides an intimate look at cities from Al Anin to Washington, DC. and inspires the reader to take up a sketch pad. -- PNBA Awards Committee Quarry Books
	The Orchardist Amanda Coplin A beautifully rendered portrait of a life sparely lived. Subtle characters communicate through gesture more than dialogue as the river of time and progress rage in the distance, known but not quite heard, bringing a quiet intensity to this remarkable debut novel. -- PNBA Awards Committee HarperCollins
	Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher Tim Egan Curtis’ journey is the stuff of legends, and it’s amazing that his has remained so quiet. An artist and adventurer who would become an icon of his time, he used his camera to preserve the ways and, more importantly, the humanity of the American Indian. Egan has honored the man and his quest in this compelling biography. -- PNBA Awards Committee Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
	The Revised Fundamental of Caregiving Jonathan Evison A story of failure, tragedy and redemption that’s packaged into a handicap-accessible van on an uproarious road trip of discovery. Evison’s rolling tribute to the great endeavor of parenthood--the pain, the joy, the privilege--is well worth the emotional mileage. --The Register Guard Algonquin Books
	Plume Kathleen Flenniken The beautifully wrought poems in Plume are as well-tuned morally as they are musically. And their lamentations are epic: hubris and its disastrous consequences, love and betrayal, human folly, human fragility. --Sharon Bryan, author of Sharp Stars University of Washington Press
	The Snow Child Eowyn Ivey Beautiful prose brings dreamlike imagery to life and vivid yearnings percolate in the minds of these finely wrought, hardscrabble homesteaders following moose tracks along glacier-fed rivers as the isolation of a woodland winter looms. This quiet, magical story is unmistakably Alaskan at its heart. -- PNBA Awards Committee Little, Brown
	On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths Lucia Perillo "It’s seldom we find such a fearless speaker we’re willing to follow just about anywhere—-from the wild bird store in a strip mall to a salmon hatchery, from the scenes of a bad French movie to the Cumshewa Inlet near Vancouver. To read this raw collection is to ask, along with Perillo, the difficult and strange questions that can plague a misfit mind." --Prairie Schooner Copper Canyon Press
	Where'd You Go, Bernadette Maria Semple A comedy of manners about the Emerald City that brings together everything we love about the television show Arrested Development (for which Semple was a writer), mixes in hyperactive modern parenting, adds a healthy dash of comedy about business culture, and tells the story of a mother and daughter in the brilliant, affecting, and bent tradition of Aimee Bender and Tom Perrotta. -- Village Books Little, Brown
	Glaciers Alexis Smith Written in a spare, understated style with occasionally stunning imagery, this little novel has a soft voice that transcends a state of yearning for faraway places in geography and time. The recurring description of a thrift store postcard is the touchstone for all of the people, places, and postcards we've left behind. -- PNBA Awards Committee Tin House Books
	Wild Cheryl Strayed A beautiful, powerful memoir about a young woman who moves through grief by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and proves she is the daughter to make her mother proud. Strayed's love/hate relationship with her hiking boots and monstrous pack, her inner strength, and the beauty and power of her 1,100-mile trek kept us riveted. -- PNBA Awards Committee Knopf / Random House
	Alif the Unseen G. Willow Wilson Grounded in the modern Middle East but bridging virtual reality, history, and mythology, this well-paced novel brings together a thought-provoking array of characters, each with a unique and powerful moral compass. -- PNBA Awards Committee Grove / Atlantic
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PNBA offers our sincere congratulations to the authors of these Shortlist books, and we encourage our member stores to give these books the extra attention they so deserve. We also encourage owners and employees of our member stores to send your comments in support of personal favorites among this Shortlist to thom@pnba.org, by Friday, November 30. Those comments will be forwarded to the Committee for consideration.

The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) is a non-profit association of independent bookstores from five Northwest states, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The Association produces educational and promotional events and materials for its members and offers literacy, free speech and author promotional vehicles through its member stores. Since 1965, our annual Book Awards have recognized such luminary figures in Northwest literature as Ivan Doig, Ursula LeGuin, David James Duncan, David Guterson, Jon Krakauer, Chuck Palahniuk, and Sherman Alexie. Many of these authors were honored by PNBA before they received national attention. A history of past winners of the Pacific Northwest Book Award can be viewed on the Book Awards homepage.

PNBA's Award Committee is comprised of nine volunteer booksellers from our member stores, throughout the region. Committee members considered more than 200 nominated titles published during 2012 for a 2013 award. In early November the Committee chose these twelve titles, from which the winners will be selected. The winners, a maximum of six books, will be determined by the Awards Committee in late December. They will then be announced in January 2013 and promoted by our member stores during the winter and spring of 2013.