Announcing the 2026 Ohio Book Award Winners
The Ohioana Library is pleased to announce the winners of the 85th annual Ohio Book Awards. First given in 1942, the awards are the second oldest state literary prizes in the nation and honor outstanding works by Ohio authors and illustrators in six categories: Fiction, Poetry, Juvenile Literature, Middle Grade Literature, Young Adult Literature, and Nonfiction. The seventh category, Book About Ohio or an Ohioan, may include books by non-Ohio authors.
Nearly every major writer from Ohio in the past 80 years has been honored, including James Thurber, Robert McCloskey, Toni Morrison, Mary Oliver, Rita Dove, Hanif Abdurraqib, Anthony Doerr, Celeste Ng, Edmund White, Virginia Hamilton, and many more.
Seven of the Ohio Book Award winners, as well as the Marvin Grant recipient, are selected by juries. The Readers’ Choice Award is determined by voters in a public online poll. Over 3,000 votes were cast for 2026's Readers’ Choice Award!
This year's winners include literary superstars as well as debut authors. Our winners come from all over the state and include native Ohioans and lifelong residents, as well as writers who no longer live here, but whose time in Ohio continues to be a deep influence on their writing and careers.
About Ohio/An Ohioan:
John U. Bacon. The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing, 2025.
Fiction:
Patrick Ryan. Buckeye. New York, NY: Random House, 2025.
Juvenile:
Jashar Awan. Every Monday Mabel. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025.
Middle Grade
Rosalyn Ransaw. Smoke & Mirrors. New York, NY: Amulet Books, 2025.
Nonfiction
John Green. Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. New York, NY: Crash Course Books, 2025.
Poetry:
Arah Ko. Brine Orchid: Poems. Portland, OR: YesYes Books, 2025.
Young Adult:
Mindy McGinnis. How Girls are Made. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2025.
Readers’ Choice:
Marty Ross-Dolen. Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter's Search for Truth. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2025.
2026 Ohioana Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant:
Juliet Del Rio. “Call it Love, Call it Invasion.”
Juliet Del Rio is a North Royalton, Ohio native who now writes from East Haddam, Connecticut. Her eco-fiction and climate fiction come from an Ohio childhood spent biking the Erie Canal towpath, hiking Cuyahoga Valley, and swimming in Lake Erie, and from the anxiety of watching those places change. Writing about the speculative what-if is how she works through it. "Call It Love, Call It Invasion" began with an invasive insect and became a story about how something can take over so gradually that you don't notice what it has displaced until it's you. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Drexel University, teaches college composition, and works as a content strategist at a creative marketing agency. Her fiction was shortlisted for the 2023 Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction, and her children's play received a 2020 Story Medicine grant from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She is also a trained master gardener.
The 2026 Ohio Book Awards will take place online on Zoom, on Thursday, October 15 at 7:00pm, and is free to attend. Register here!
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Congratulations to our winners!
Founded in 1929 by Ohio First Lady Martha Kinney Cooper, the Ohioana Library Association's mission is to connect readers and Ohio writers. Through its collection, publications, and programs, Ohioana celebrates and promotes Ohio as one of America's great literary centers.