Browse: Home / original awards essays

original awards essays

Jan

20

2026

Leyna Krow headshot

An Original Essay by 2026 PNBA Book Award Winner Leyna Krow

Before I was an author I was, briefly, a bookseller. The summer between finishing graduate school and getting my first teaching job, I worked a Spokane’s gorgeous downtown bookstore, Auntie’s. The story I want to tell is about something that happened on my first day. I had just been trained on how to answer the …

Jan

16

2026

An Original Essay by 2026 PNBA
Book Award Winner Kelly Goto

I grew up in a house where creativity lived in the walls. Cartoons taped along cabinets, carved rocks on display, a small unicorn painting near the coffee cups, and a 4-foot plaster cast of illustrated ducks hung on our dining room wall. As a child, I didn’t realize how these surroundings shaped my memories. They …