Since 1942, The Ohioana Library Association has made it its mission to collect, preserve, protect and promote the written works of writers, musicians and artists who live in or write about the Buckeye State.

And that includes the select group of authors who will be honored during the 2010 Ohioana Award luncheon on October 16 at the Ohio Statehouse. In addition to poet Rita Dove (featured in the October Ohio Magazine), this year’s book-award winners join an extraordinary legion of past recipients that includes James Thurber, Toni Morrison and Bob Hope.

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Fiction
In his newest work, Await Your Reply, Cleveland author and Oberlin College professor Dan Chaon interconnects the lives of three strangers. There’s Miles, who can’t stop searching for his troubled twin, Hayden, missing for a decade. There’s Lucy, a new high school graduate who sneaks away from small-town Ohio with her former history teacher. And there’s Ryan, who, believing his whole life is a lie, decides to remake himself through unconventional and precarious means. The result: a gripping tale with unexpected consequences. (Ballantine Books)

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Nonfiction
New York Times op-ed columnist and Cincinnati native Gail Collins chronicles 50 years of the women’s movement in When Everything Changed. The journey begins in 1960, when most wives needed their husband’s permission to apply for a credit card, and ends with Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign. Along the way, Collins explores five decades of evolving politics, pop culture and fashion, as well as new attitudes prevalent in the workplace. (Little, Brown and Company)

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About Ohio/Ohioan
Ohio Division of Wildlife specialist Jim McCormac of Columbus and retired Cleveland schoolteacher Gary Meszaros have combined their talents to create Wild Ohio, a magnificent celebration of our state’s biodiversity. This beautifully illustrated coffee-table-worthy book spotlights rare and declining plants and animals with the intention of inspiring a love of nature and an interest in conservation. (The Kent State University Press)

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Juvenile
Columbus native Michael J. Rosen captures the beauty of more than 20 American birds in The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Birding Poems. Young readers will delight in the twittering chimney swifts who sail “above the citronella glow” at dusk and the “one-man band” call of the northern mockingbird. (Candlewick Press)