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Middle grade and younger grownup literature has made nice strides in recent times to turn into extra inclusive and various, however one space that’s nonetheless missing is genuine illustration of rural locations and experiences. The Whippoorwill Award is aiming to alter that. Given yearly, this award honors 10 center grade or younger grownup books revealed in the earlier 12 months which are set in rural locations.
This 12 months’s winners embody a variety of genres, together with A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy, Air by Monica Roe, and The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson, and earlier winners have included This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron, Where the Heart is by Jo Knowles, and Hurricane Child by Kacen Callender.
Named for the whippoorwill chook, which might be discovered in lots of rural areas, the mission of this award is “to advocate for books that portray the complexity of rural living by dispelling stereotypes and demonstrating diversity among rural people.” Now in its fourth 12 months, the award has lifted up a various choice of books, and the focus is on celebrating a variety of experiences somewhat than narrowing alternatives to single winners or a handful of honors. Recognizing that “rural” can imply so much of various things, winners have different from sensible fiction in rural Southern settings to fantastical tales set in small-town upstate New York, with so much of variation in between. This angle of celebrating selection, in addition to its distinctive give attention to an underrepresented and usually mocked or denigrated setting, makes the Whippoorwill Award an intriguing standout in the many awards for literature for younger individuals.
The Whippoorwill Award was based by Dr. Jenn Sanders of Oklahoma State University, a Dresser Endowed Professor of Rural Teacher Education, and her doctoral pupil Jill Bindewald. It launched in 2019, and it honors books that painting “the value of rural spaces, knowledge, cultures, and histories” and characterize “the reality of rural places without overly romanticizing or denigrating a place.” Among the first books honored had been They Call Me Guëro, David Bowles’s novel-in-verse a couple of light-skinned boy rising up on the U.S.-Mexican border, and Give Me Some Truth by Eric Gansworth, a YA novel a couple of teen boy who pins his hopes of getting off his reservation on a Battle of the Bands competitors. Since its inaugural 12 months, the books have been revealed by a pleasant combine of Big Five and impartial publishers.
In an interview with 2023-2024 Whippoorwill Committee Co-Chair Dr. Chea Parton on her podcast Reading Rural YAL, Dr. Sanders mentioned how the award began. “I saw this disconnect between the way rural people and places were represented in that when I lived and taught in rural places, I felt there was more diversity than what was represented in a lot of the literature I was seeing.” Dr. Sanders then went on to clarify the way it was her pupil Bindewald’s concept to kind a nationwide award committee, and collectively, they labored to kind the construction of the award. They selected to give attention to center grade and younger grownup books, with an emphasis on various views in rural settings to “counter the stereotype that rural looks one way or is one thing.”
Dr. Chea Parton is now in her second 12 months of serving on the Whippoorwill Award Committee. For her, the Whippoorwill Award is filling a much-needed hole in the panorama of kids’s literature by selling rural settings and showcasing their significance in the training panorama, in addition to to readers. “I remember googling ‘rural YA literature’ only to get four hits and two of them were Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King,” she says. “Then I googled ‘urban YA literature’ and book after book and list after list popped up.” Now, for those who Google “rural YA literature,” articles by Dr. Parton present up on the first web page of outcomes, alongside hyperlinks to the Whippoorwill Award and lists of YA books set in rural areas.
Although the award is just in its fourth 12 months, Dr. Parton may be very enthusiastic about the way it has grown. “I’ve read more rural YA and MG in the last few years than I did my entire existence as a young reader…[a]nd for the most part they’re not stereotypical or position rural folks as the butt of a redneck joke. I’ve seen a lot of complex and nuanced representation of rural people.” Previous Whippoorwill Award winners have additionally collected a formidable quantity of awards and accolades. The books are additionally National Book Award finalists, Pura Belpré honors, Stonewall Award Winners, and Walter Dean Myers Award honors and winners. Many of them have been named on regional or state studying lists.
However, Dr. Parton does acknowledge there may be nonetheless work to be carried out, saying, “there are rural identities that are conspicuously and frustratingly missing. Rural identities themselves are forced to the margins, but the multiply marginalized even more so. Representations of rural Black folks, rural AAPI, rural Latine, and rural Muslim folks seem to be the hardest to come by. We’ve seen an increase in rural Indigenous representation and rural queer representation, but definitely need more books that tell the stories of all these folks.”
Whippoorwill Award-winning writer Monica Roe additionally hopes that bringing extra recognition to rural experiences in fiction will assist society be extra delicate to the sorts of stereotypes rural individuals face. “In so many areas of media or pop culture it’s considered completely acceptable to actively promote harmful rural stereotypes — think trailer trash, inbred ignorance, or any number of other terrible tropes aimed at historically marginalized regions such as Appalachia — to an almost gleeful level,” she says. Even now, some not-so-flattering photos of rural residing and rural life nonetheless persist and make their method into books being revealed at present. But as Roe identified, “the assumption of rural as being monolithically conservative, country music-worshipping, flag-waving, and non-diverse does such a disservice to how complex and nuanced rural American really is.”
Dr. Parton hopes that as time goes on and extra individuals find out about the award, the award will get extra recognition from readers, lecturers, librarians, and the publishing trade. “We are working on setting up a way that teachers, authors, and librarians can get their hands on seals for the award winning books on their shelves. We love seeing winning authors share on social media and hope that other rural authors and publishers of rural books see and submit their work for consideration.” Currently, authors and publishers can view the standards and submit their unique work to the committee for consideration. Instructions might be discovered on the award web site. Most of the submissions come from publishers, however many come from authors as effectively. Currently, the committee opinions a mean of 50 books per 12 months, and they usually attain out to authors who write rural-set literature and encourage them and their publishers to submit books for evaluation.
After being named a Whippoorwill Award winner in 2023, Roe is now happy to be on the committee for 2024. She sees it as a kind of giving again to the writing group and serving to different rural writers hopefully discover an viewers. “Rural people from all demographic backgrounds face barriers to even get published — location, stereotypes within the industry or society at large, and lack of internships or opportunities,” she says.
“I would love to see Whippoorwill Award displays in school and local libraries. Or hear from teachers via social media how they’re using the award winners in their classrooms,” Dr. Parton stated, including that phrase of mouth is vital to the award’s success. “We love seeing winning authors share on social media and hope that other rural authors and publishers of rural books see and submit their work for consideration.” This phrase of mouth is useful not solely in elevating the existence of the award to the consideration of publishers and to those that put books in the fingers of youngsters and teenagers but additionally to these lecturers, librarians, and authors who work onerous to advertise rural literature. Dr. Parton sees lecturers and authors as integral to serving to the award perform. Currently, the Whippoorwill Award is set by a bunch of committee members, principally educators, who’re all volunteers. In the future, Dr. Parton would like to see the committee develop and variety “to be as representative of the plethora of rural identities as possible.”
In Roe’s view, publishing nonetheless has some work to do on this entrance. She cites the want for sensitivity and authenticity readers who can learn for rural experiences. “I hope these conversations continue in the future and I hope publishing as a whole is willing to do the work to elevate rural writing and authors and make sure the portrayals they are releasing are authentic — not sanitized and idealized, but complex and not one-sided.” Having an award devoted to exemplary rural writing may encourage publishers and creators to take further care in how they craft these tales. Roe sees the creation of the Whippoorwill Award — and Dr. Parton’s work along with her weblog Literacy in Place — as a step in the proper course. “But there is still work to be done.”
When requested about the significance of the work of the committee and the Whippoorwill Award, Dr. Parton emphasised the significance of sharing various tales. “Everybody deserves to see their identity, their experiences, their life chronicled on paper — to know that who they are is valuable and worth writing about — so we definitely need more intersectional rural stories.”
To see a full record of the 2023 Whippoorwill Award winners and previous winners, in addition to this 12 months’s committee members, try the Whippoorwill Award web site.
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