Complexities and Intersectionalities of Rurality in The 2025 Whippoorwill Book Award

Meet the Contributors:

Our Contributors are a team put together by Erika L. Bass

Erika Bass is assistant professor of English education at University of Northern Iowa. Her research is focused on preservice teacher education, rural education, and literacies; often those three areas intersect. She truly believes place and identity are deeply connected.

Erika has contributed to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday in the past and is scheduled to do so again.

She is joined by:

Michael J. Young
Michael Young is an assistant professor of elementary literacy education at Illinois State University. He is a former elementary teacher, middle school instructional coach, and K-12 curriculum leader. Michael’s research examines pursuits of equity and justice in literacy teaching and learning by considering intersections of reading and writing development, critical literacy, education policy, identity, and antiracist pedagogies in schools and communities.

​Erin Schulz
After growing up on a sheep and wheat farm in a town of 500 people, Erin Schulz taught Language Arts to middle school students in the Yakima Valley  for 5 years. Although now living and teaching in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, rural stories and representation are always on Erin's mind. 


Monica Roe
Monica Roe is a Whippoorwill Award-winning author, physical therapist, beekeeper, and researcher/advocate for the social model of disability and inclusive rural health. A first-generation graduate, Monica studies public health and disability-inclusive disaster preparedness at the University of Alaska and spent over a decade as a pediatric physical therapy consultant for remote, off-road communities in northwestern Alaska. She and her family divide their time between Alaska and their apiary in rural South Carolina.

 Jacaueline Yahn

Jacqueline Yahn is associate professor of teacher education at Ohio University, a generational Appalachian, and a lifelong resident of the Ohio Valley. Her research focuses on rural school and community viability and and she teaches several classes in middle childhood education including language arts and social studies methods, children’s literature, and middle childhood literature.

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Complexities and Intersectionalities of Rurality in The 2025 Whippoorwill Book Award
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Michael J. Young, Erika L. Bass, Erin Schulz, Monica Roe, & Jacqueline Yahn 

The complexities of rural life are diverse, nuanced, and ever-evolving. No one representation can capture these complexities. This is a core value guiding the evaluation of rural middle grades and young adult literature honored through the Whippoorwill Book Award. As the selection committee for the award, this is something we recognize and celebrate. Our commitment centers around advocacy for middle grades and young adult literature that portrays the complexities of rural living. This advocacy includes work to dispel stereotypes while also affirming the diverse identities, experiences, and stories shared among rural people.

As we take up this important work in the current moment, we do so in a time of intensified division, marginalization, and erasure across the vast spaces where we live our lives. This context impacts each of us, individually and collectively. The reading of middle grades and young adult literature in this current moment cannot be separated from the realities we continue to experience every day. This highlights the urgency for our commitment to advocacy for literature that can offer refuge, belonging, and exploration of the identities, experiences, and stories we share. 

The Whippoorwill Award, now in its sixth year of honoring rural literature and second year of a revised award structure (see Bass et al., 2025), continues to recognize excellence in middle-grade and young adult literature in this current moment. In a continuous effort to select books that “portray the complexity of rural living by dispelling stereotypes and demonstrating diversity among rural people” (https://whippoorwillaward.weebly.com/), the committee engaged in reading and extensive discussion around the complexities of rural life in this current moment. This involved discussions navigating issues of race and racism, sexuality and gender, cis-heteronormativity and hate violence, immigration and refugee status, gender and indigeneity, religion and spirituality, class and poverty, grief and loss, addiction and healing, place and belonging. Across these discussions, tuning into the intersectional identities and experiences that continue to shape life in rural places became a key focus in our deliberations.

By tuning into the intersectionalities of identity and experience, we looked at the ways varying aspects of identity and experience overlap, providing further complexity and nuance to representing life in rural spaces. Shaped by Crenshaw’s (1989) positioning of intersectionality in discussions of discrimination, marginalization, and privilege, our deliberation of rural literature in the current moment evolved into ongoing conversations of character, story, and storytelling. These conversations looked to literature as a vehicle for truly offering refuge, belonging, and exploration of the identities, experiences, and stories we share. These conversations helped us identify books that work to capture the complexities of rural life in the current moment.

The 2025 Whippoorwill Award-winning book and eight honor books offer conversations for navigating the intersectional complexities of rural life in important ways. In this moment when division, marginalization, and erasure continue to impact our national (and global) story, we committed ourselves to selecting books that provide narratives offering a nuanced examination of the complex ways our identities and experiences intersect with rurality. This conversation recognizes that the winner and honor books offer opportunities for celebrating our stories, our struggles, and our unwavering commitment to living our rural lives with authenticity, love, and joy.

The 2025 Whippoorwill Award Books

2025 Award Winner:

John Cochran, Breaking into Sunlight, Little Brown
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Cochran leads readers through Reese’s journey of friendship, the impact of addiction on his family, and learning how to support a loved one in active addiction. Careful not to make any character the villain, Cochran masterfully explores the nuances of rural identity (“townies” and “country folk”) and how that intersects with religious communities and the impact of addiction.

Honor Books (listed in alphabetical order by author last name):

Tom Birdseye, There is No Map for This, Groundwood Books

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Author Tom Birdseye’s extensive backcountry wilderness experience is on full display—especially in some of the book's more gripping scenes—and the realities of working-class life in a hardscrabble rural community are portrayed with nuance and authenticity. The book’s ultimately hopeful ending feels well-deserved, leaving readers with an optimistic look into what the future holds for Ren, for Ellie, and for Levi’s legacy. 

K.A. Cobell, Looking for Smoke, Heartdrum

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When two teenage girls go missing on the Blackfeet reservation, four teenagers work to solve the murders of their friends. As they work to solve the crimes, each of their complicated histories and secrets rises to the surface. Exploring tensions between characters, Cobell’s story highlights important considerations about rurality, indigenous cultures, loss, betrayal, and the realities of the MMIWG movement. 

Mike Deas & Nancy Deas, Crystal Cave, Orca

The fifth installment of the Sueño Bay Adventures graphic novel series follows tween-aged Ollie and his friends on a quest to discover a fabled crystal hidden on their quirky island home in hopes that it will heal his ailing grandfather. This story’s premise, while fun and fantastical in nature, explores some more serious aspects of rural life. The remote island location, lack of easy access to medical care, and Ollie's looming fear of having to leave Sueño Bay if his grandpa is unable to come home and live independently are all significant challenges that are familiar to those who live in rural and remote communities. The inclusion of elderly islanders as the secret protectors of the island adds a nicely intergenerational aspect to the storyline. 

Erin Hahn, Even if it Breaks Your Heart, Wednesday Books

Case Michaels is a stand-out in the rodeo circuit and is dealing with the recent loss of his best friend, ace fellow bullrider, Walker. Winnie Sutton works as a ranch hand on Case’s family ranch, and she’s not sure Case even knows who she is.This story follows their slow-burning romance, as they both struggle with grief, loss, and figuring out their futures. Hahn’s story explores themes of grief, loss, self-discovery, and the courageous act of pursuing your dreams. This book opens conversations about the intersections of rurality, socioeconomic status, familial expectations, and carving your own path. 

Trina Rathgeber, Alina Pete, & Jillian Dolan, Lost at Windy River, Orca

Author Trina Rathgeber guides this approach by focusing on placing back into the story what was lost in the original telling of the story in Mowat’s People of the Deer–her grandmother Ilse Schweder’s voice. Across the 88 pages of the story, through beautifully rendered images and snippets of Ilse’s memories, we learn how she survived getting lost in a snowstorm in 1944 at the age of thirteen while checking her family’s trapline in Northern Canada. The narrative is bookended with a preface, author’s note, and photographs that connect readers to Ilse and help them recognize how her knowledge of place and the love of her family gave her the tools to survive. 

Mason Stokes, All the Truth I Can Stand, Calkins Creek/Astra Books

Set in Juniper, Wyoming, in the 1990s, this speculative fiction novel tells the story of a gay teenager who must deal with the violent loss that draws from the tragic murder of Matthew Shephard. The relationship that develops between Ash and Shane is exciting but complicated. When Shane is found brutally beaten and unconscious, Ash is shattered. The brutal attack grows into a rallying point for gay rights. Ash is forced to navigate the complexities of his and Shane’s story and what it becomes. The heartbreaking exploration of identity, grief, violence, and legacy in a rural place offers important conversations of story and storytelling, identities and histories, and the realities and perceptions that guide our lives.

Jennifer Torres, Vega’s Piece of the Sky, Little Brown

When a meteorite crashes in the nearby desert, Vega realizes the valuable stone could be her ticket to saving her way of life. With cousin Mila, sent to the desert to get her away from influences in the city, and traveling treasure-hunter Jasper, Vega sets off into the wilderness. The three of them are determined to find the fallen space rock before treasure hunters from all over the country beat them to it. Over the course of one night, the three work together to face the dangers of the wild: coyotes, flash flooding, and the vastness of the desert. The focus on desert communities, including their beauty, precarity, and a uniquely wonderful piece of the sky, makes this a stand-out read.

Jenna Voris, Every Time You Hear That Song, Viking/Penguin

 When Decklee Cassel dies, she sends her fans on a scavenger hunt, and Darren is convinced it’s a time capsule with never-before-released Decklee Cassel songs. As a die-hard fan, Darren jumps on the opportunity to find these songs—she believes finding the time capsule will solve her family’s money problems and help her achieve her dream of leaving her town and going off to college. As Kendall and Darren follow Decklee’s clues, they both learn a lot about each other and how much they truly have in common. Kendall helps Darren appreciate her hometown, and Darren helps Kendall understand her desire to leave. Vorris’ story explores the intersections of rural identity, gender, socioeconomic status, and familial expectations. 

​*This article is a condensed version of the article published in The Rural Educator, which is an open-access journal, allowing for reproduction of works published in their journal.