A dazzling literary chronicle of one of America’s most haunting writers took the top prize for general non-fiction at this year’s Oregon Book Awards.
Tracy Daugherty's "The Last Love Song" won the prize for general non-fiction at the 2017 Oregon Book Awards.
Courtesy of St. Martin's Griffin / Macmillan
Corvallis writer Tracy Daugherty’s book, “The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion,” brings deep focus to the notoriously private Didion’s life, and a biographer’s empathy for the experiences that shaped her precise, exhilarating prose.
Judge
called the book, “a tour de force … His lyrical narrative conveys Didion’s ambitions, her joys and terrible losses, as well as her connection to the important places and eras of her life.”
Speaking with OPB's "State of Wonder" last weekend (hear the full interview in the audio player at the top of this story), Daugherty said, “One of my first problems when I considered writing this book was how to approach writing about another writer who is known for being a stylist.” He traces her life, growing up in Sacramento, heir to a storied pioneer family narrative, through her literary coming of age as she wrote for “Vogue”, “The National Review”, and other A-list publications in
He traces her life, growing up in Sacramento, heir to a storied pioneer family, through her literary coming of age as she wrote for "Vogue," "The National Review," and other A-list publications in 1950s and 1960s Manhattan.
"I wanted to analyze her style and figure out how she did it," Daugherty said, "but I also became interested in trying to convey to a reader who, perhaps, is not familiar with Didion, what Didion's world is like, and what the experience of reading Didion is like."
The book traces the rise of Didion's star, with searing essay collections like "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," and "The White Album," through devastating recent years, marred by the loss of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and her daughter, Quintana. They died within two years of each other.
Daugherty says of Didion's life, "I really think the way she sees the world can't be divorced from that style and that structure."
Walidah Imarisha, formerly a lecturer at Portland State University.
a href="https://literary-arts.org/what-we-do/oba-home/" target="_blank">In other categories, Walidah Imarisha took home the prize for creative non-fiction for her trilogy of short stories about the criminal justice system, “Angels With Dirty Faces.” A prolific writer and editor (her anthologies include
“Octavia’s Brood,” a collection of science fiction from social justice perspectives
), she spent several years traveling Oregon as an Oregon Humanities public scholar, presenting research on black history and the state’s tradition of racist oppression. She recently left Oregon for a position at Stanford University.
Cindy Williams Gutiérrez took the Angus Bowmer Prize for drama for her play, “Words That Burn.” It’s a synthesis of the words of three American veterans who interpreted war experiences through poetry. The show unites the words of Oregon greats William Stafford and Lawson Inada with an ex-Marine named Guy Gabaldon.
California-born Gabaldon saw the Japanese-American family who raised him incarcerated at Heart Mountain during World War II. During his military service, he orchestrated the surrender of hundreds of Japanese troops at a key battle, earning the nickname "The Pied Piper of Saipan." Listen at this link to hear about an early incarnation of play as Gutiérrez in 2014.
Joyce Cherry Cresswell took the Ken Kesey Award for fiction, for her Civil War novel, "A Great Length of Time," and poetry honors went to Joe Wilkins of McMinnville for his collection, "When We Were Birds."
See the full list of winners here.