The 2024 Ohio Book Awards, presented by the Ohioana Library, feature three winners from Northeast Ohio: James McBride, Sarah Lohman and Laura Meckler.
The awards were established in 1942 and honor Ohio authors in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, About Ohio or an Ohioan (which may include books by non-Ohio authors), Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature, Juvenile Literature, and Readers’ Choice. The awards are the second oldest state literary prizes in the nation.
This year’s awards included over 300 submissions, with five to six being ultimately judged in each category. This year marks the 95th anniversary of the Ohioana Library, which will be celebrated as part of the awards ceremony at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on the evening of Tuesday, October 29.
Northeast Ohio winners included:
- Fiction: James McBride. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Riverhead Books, 2023. (Oberlin/Lorain County)
- Nonfiction and Readers’ Choice: Sarah Lohman. Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods. W.W. Norton & Company, 2023. (Hinckley/Medina County, born in Ohio)
- About Ohio or an Ohioan: Laura Meckler.Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity. Henry Holt, 2023. (Shaker Heights & Cleveland/Cuyahoga County, born in Ohio)
Northeast Ohio winner biographies:
McBride is the author of the New York Times—bestselling Oprah’s Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award’s winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill’Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024 and the recipient of a National Humanities Medal, as well as being an accomplished musician, McBride is a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.
Lohman is a culinary historian and the author of the bestselling books Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods and Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She focuses on the history of food as a way to access the stories of diverse Americans. Endangered Eating is a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon’s Editors, Food & Wine, and Adam Gopnik on the Milk Street podcast. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR. Formerly the Culinary Curator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Lohman has lectured across the country, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to The Culinary Historians of Southern California. She is a columnist for Gastro Obscura and writes about rare foods. Lohman is based in Las Vegas and is a frequent collaborator with the Neon Museum Las Vegas and is co-host of the Las Vegas City Cast podcast.
Meckler is national education writer for The Washington Post, where she covers education across the country, as well as national education policy and politics. She previously reported on the White House, presidential politics, immigration, and health care for The Wall Street Journal, as well as health and social policy for The Associated Press. Her honors include a Nieman Fellowship and Livingston Award for National Reporting, and she was part of a team that won the George Polk Award for Justice Reporting. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.
