Orion Book Award Finalists

Orion magazine has announced the five finalists for the 2008 Orion Book Award, which is presented annually to a book that deepens our connection to the natural world, presents new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieves excellence in writing. The finalists are:

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
Diane Ackerman
(W.W. Norton)

Strange as This Weather Has Been: A Novel
Ann Pancake
(Counterpoint)

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring
Richard Preston
(Random House)

Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place
Robert Michael Pyle
(Houghton Mifflin)

The World Without Us
Alan Weisman
(Thomas Dunne Books)

“These are books for our time,” said Kathleen Dean Moore, chairperson of the 2008 Orion Book Award selection committee. “They ask how we will answer the Earth’s call to courage and human decency, and where we will find the strength.”

Vote for your favorites!

Please vote in the first annual Readers’ Choice Award. All forty-three books nominated for the Orion Book Award are eligible for the Readers’ Choice Award. To see the complete list, vote, and register your comments, click here.

Winners of both the 2008 Orion Book Award and Orion Readers’ Choice Award will be announced April 1. The 2008 Orion Book Award will be presented on April 16 in New York City, along with four finalist prizes. There is a cash prize for the winning book and the finalists, but not for the Readers' Choice Award.

2008 Orion Book Award selection committee:

Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw essayist, novelist, poet, and playwright whose books include Dwellings, Solar Storms, and the forthcoming novel People of the Whale. She is in the process of moving to the Chickasaw Nation, where she will be writer-in-residence.

Mark Kurlansky is the author of Cod, Salt, 1968, The Big Oyster, and, most recently, Nonviolence. His forthcoming book The Last Fish Tale is about the linked fate of the Atlantic fishery and the seaport of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Kathleen Dean Moore is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University and the founding director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. She is also the author of three books of essays: The Pine Island Paradox, Holdfast, and Riverwalking.

David Rothenberg is a philosopher, musician, and author of Always the Mountains, Hand’s End, Why Birds Sing, and the forthcoming Thousand-Mile Song. He is associate professor of philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the editor of the Terra Nova book series, published by MIT Press.

Jennifer Sahn is editor of Orion magazine. Articles she has edited have received the Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs Essay Award, and have been reprinted in Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best Creative Nonfiction, and numerous other periodicals. She has also served as editor for several book projects.

The 2007 Orion Book Award was given to Wild: An Elemental Journey, by Jay Griffiths (Jeremy P. Tarcher). Other finalists were: The Lives of Rocks: Stories, by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin); Inferno, by Charles Bowden, photographs by Michael P. Berman (University of Texas Press); Returning to Earth, by Jim Harrison (Grove Press); and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan (The Penguin Press).

More about the Orion Book Award