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From the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library - April 24, 2025

The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library has announced the winners of the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards, presented this year by sponsor Education Minnesota. In addition to winners in ten categories, The Friends presented the Kay Sexton Award to the previously announced recipient.

The Ceremony was held at the Ordway Tuesday evening, April 22, emceed by Tane Danger. 

Related: Drury Lane Books Prepares to Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day

The winners of the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards are: 

Award for Anthology (new biennial award category), sponsored by Minnesota Humanities Center

Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces edited by Margret Aldrich & Michelle Filkins (Spout Press)*

Subverting the traditional idea of “locker room talk,” this collection illuminates the conversations women share with family, friends, and strangers, whether at the sinks of the First Avenue ladies’ room, on a bus heading to the Women’s March in Washington, DC, or in the kitchen of an elder relative. They reveal the myriad ways women care for themselves, each other, and their communities.

Aldrich is the author of The Little Free Library Book, recipient of an Innovator Award from the Book Industry Study Group, and former Princeton University Writing Fellow. Margaret is the director of communications and media relations at the Little Free Library nonprofit organization. 

Filkins is a founding editor of Spout Press and a contributing author to The Evolution of Human Cooperation and Community Development. She is a professor and reference and instruction librarian at Metro State University. 

Award for Children’s Literature, sponsored by Beret Publishing:
The Rock in My Throat by Kao Kalia Yang; illustrated by Jiemei Lin (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group)*

Kao Kalia Yang shares her experiences as a young Hmong refugee in the United States navigating two cultures and two languages. She sees what happens as her parents enter the English-speaking world and are met with rudeness and disrespect. And in a silent act of rebellion, Kalia stops speaking at school. 

Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of A Map into the World, From the Tops of the Trees, The Song Poet, and Where Rivers Part. Much of Yang’s work is inspired by the people in her life, individuals who have gifted her with the strength of their stories. She is a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner.  

Award for General Nonfiction, sponsored by Fredrikson & Byron P.A.:
The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists by Lisa Mueller (Beacon Press) 

We are in the middle of a historic swell of activism taking place throughout the world. In this book, Mueller highlights what really works when it comes to group advocacy. Incorporating interactive exercises and the voices of experienced activists with her analysis, Mueller shows how a working knowledge of social science can help activists implement more effective strategies to create the real-world changes we want to see.  

Mueller, PhD, is associate professor of Political Science at Macalester College. Her first book, Political Protest in Contemporary Africa, received an honorable mention for Best Book of the Year from the African Politics Conference Group. She is a contributor to the Washington Post and has just returned from a year of service and study as a Fulbright Scholar.

Award for Genre Fiction, sponsored by Macalester College:
Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie Rendon (Bantam/Penguin Random House) 

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. So when learns women are being stolen, she is determined to do something about it. In her quest to find justice for all the women of the reservation, Quill is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them.  

Rendon, citizen of the White Earth Nation, is one of O: The Oprah Magazine’s 31 Native American Authors to Read Right Now and a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award winner. Author of the acclaimed Cash Blackbear novels: Murder on the Red River and Girl Gone Missing, she is also a playwright and poet.  

Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction, sponsored by Bradshaw Celebration of Life Centers:
Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother's Life by Kao Kalia Yang (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster) 

Kao Kalia Yang channels her mother’s saga with tenderness and clarity, beginning with a childhood in Laos marked by the violence of America’s Secret War. Yang follows her mother’s story through flight, a refugee camp in Thailand, and immigration to the United States where she enrolls in high school at 30 while providing for her family.  

Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of A Map into the World, From the Tops of the Trees, The Song Poet, and Where Rivers Part. Much of Yang’s work is inspired by the people in her life, individuals who have gifted her with the strength of their stories. She is a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner.  

Award for Middle Grade Literature, sponsored by Education Minnesota:
The Diamond Explorer by Kao Kalia Yang (Dutton Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House)  

Malcolm is the youngest child of Hmong refugees, born over a decade after his youngest sibling, giving him a unique perspective on his complicated immigrant family. As middle school begins, we see this “quiet, slow Hmong boy” is anything but. Malcom is a gifted collector of his family’s stories and tireless seeker of his own place within an evolving Hmong American culture. His journey toward becoming a shaman like his grandparents before him is inspiring and revelatory. 

Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of A Map into the World, From the Tops of the Trees, The Song Poet, and Where Rivers Part. Much of Yang’s work is inspired by the people in her life, individuals who have gifted her with the strength of their stories. She is a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner, and this is her middle-grade debut novel.  

Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction, sponsored by Annette and John Whaley:
The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America by Michelle S. Phelps (Princeton University Press)  

The fiery protests that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd made Minneapolis a national emblem for the failures of police reform. In response, members of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to “end” the Minneapolis Police Department. In The Minneapolis Reckoning, Phelps details the city’s struggles and shows how the dualized meaning of the police—as both the promise of state protection and the threat of state violence—creates the complex politics of policing that thwart change.    

Phelps is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the coauthor of Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice. Her research has been featured in the Washington Post, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, NPR, FiveThirtyEight, The Appeal, and other media outlets, and has informed criminal justice reform efforts by the Human Rights Watch and Pew Charitable Trusts Public Safety Performance Project. 

Award for Novel & Short Story, sponsored by Minnesota Humanities Center:
Obligations to the Wounded by Mubanga Kalimamukwento (University of Pittsburgh Press)  

Obligations to the Wounded explores the expectations and burdens of womanhood in Zambia and for Zambian women living abroad. The collection converses with global social problems to illustrate how girls and women manage religious expectation, migration, loss of language, death, intimate partner violence, and racial discrimination. Although the women and girls inhabiting these pages are separated geographically and by life stage, their shared burdens, culture, and homeland inextricably link them together in struggle and triumph. 

Kalimamukwento is a Zambian attorney and writer. She is the winner of the 2022 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, the 2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, and the 2019 Kalemba Short Story Prize. Her first novel, The Mourning Bird, was listed among the top fifteen debut books of 2019 by Brittle Paper. 

Award for Poetry, sponsored by Wellington Management, Inc.:
Bluff by Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)*  

Bluff is Smith’s powerful reckoning with violence, shame, easy pessimism, their responsibility as a poet, and their hometown of the Twin Cities. This book is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting. Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.  

Smith is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Homie, winner of the Minnesota Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. Don’t Call Us Dead won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and was a finalist for the National Book Award.  

Award for Young Adult Literature, sponsored by Red Balloon Bookshop:
Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer (Arthur Levine/Levine Querido)

Ezra Cloud hates living in Northeast Minneapolis and being away from the rez at Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation. And he hates the local bully, Matt Schroeder. Ezra gets into a terrible fight with Matt at school, and that same night, Matt’s house burns down. Instantly, Ezra becomes a prime suspect. Knowing he won’t get a fair deal, Ezra’s family sends him away to his grandfather in a remote part of Canada. But the Schroeders are looking for him… 

Treuer is Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and author of many books. He has sat on many organizational boards and has received more than 40 prestigious awards and fellowships. He is building an Ojibwe teacher training program at Bemidji State University. 

*Indicates a Minnesota-based publisher.

Special Award

Kay Sexton Award: Ann Regan (previously announced)
Ann Regan grew up in Billings, Montana, and graduated from the University of Montana with a double major in history and Russian. While working as a summer volunteer for the Montana Historical Society, she was mentored by Vivian Paladin, editor of the society’s quarterly journal. That work led her to a temporary position as a research assistant at the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) Press, where she remained for 45 years in various positions, retiring as the editor-in-chief in 2024.

More information can be found at www.thefriends.org/winners.

Books written by a Minnesotan and first published in 2024 were eligible for the 37th annual Minnesota Book Awards. A total of 306 books were submitted for awards this year, and 40 books were selected as finalists. The winners were chosen by panels of judges from around the state. Submissions for next year’s awards will open in August 2025. For more information on the Book Awards process, and a list of finalists and winners since 1988, visit www.thefriends.org/mnba.  

John and Ruth Huss are lead event sponsors. Saint Paul Neighborhood Network is our outreach partner.

The Minnesota Book Awards is a year-long program of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library that connects readers and writers throughout the state with the stories of our neighbors. The process begins in the fall with book submissions and continues through winter with two rounds of judging. Winners are announced at the Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony each spring. Woven throughout the season are events that promote the authors and connect the world of Minnesota books – writers, artists, illustrators, publishers, editors, and more – to readers throughout the state. In recognition of this and its other statewide programs and services, the Library of Congress has recognized The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library as the state’s designated Center for the Book. For more information visit thefriends.org/mnba.  

About The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library:
The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library acts as a catalyst for libraries to strengthen and inspire their communities. An independent, nonprofit organization established in 1945, The Friends invests in the Saint Paul Public Library through fundraising, advocacy, and programming; as a result, our Library is a nationally-recognized leader in serving its community. The Friends also serves libraries across the country through its consulting services, Library Strategies, and promotes literacy, reading, and libraries statewide as the Library of Congress’s designated Minnesota Center for the Book. For more information, contact The Friends at 651-222-3242 or visit thefriends.org.