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The Origin of Ava: A Novel
235 pages, Paperback
Published March 10, 2026
About the author
Annie Lampman
2 books29 followersAnnie Lampman was born to an 1800s log farmhouse on the Fraser Prairie in north-central Idaho, ancestral home of the Nez Perce Tribe. Living a “back to the earth” lifestyle, her family had no running water other than what was collected from the roof to the cistern, and the “bathroom” was an outhouse a hundred yards out back along with a salvaged claw-foot bathtub in the kitchen next to the wood cook-stove where they heated water to bucket fill the tub. Later the family moved to Headquarters, Idaho—a remote early-1900s logging company town in the middle of the wilderness surrounded by millions of acres of trees and mountains stretching to Canada and back—where they stayed for forty years.
Homeschooling herself through high school, Lampman picked seed pinecones by the bushel to pay for her school supplies, and taught herself dendrology, ecology, and naturalist studies with her uncle’s old 1960’s college textbooks and the art of bonsai with her grandmother’s old 1940s bonsai books. She studied trees, made firewood, rode her horse (that she saddle-broke herself, although not very well), swam and camped on the wild North Fork of the Clearwater River, and backpacked with llamas into secluded high-country lakes and the depths of Hells Canyon. As an undergrad, she studied Nez Perce oral traditions and language in addition to creative writing. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho where she worked with memoirist/novelist Kim Barnes.
Lampman is the author of the novel SINS OF THE BEES (Pegasus/Simon & Schuster) and the limited-edition letterpress poetry chapbook BURNING TIME (Limberlost Press). Her short stories, poetry, and narrative essays have been published in sixty-some literary journals and anthologies such as The Normal School, Orion Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, and Women Writing the West. She has been awarded the Dogwood Literary Award in Fiction, the Everybody Writes Award in Poetry, a Best American Essays “Notable,” a Pushcart Prize special mention, a Literature Fellowship special mention by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and a wilderness artist’s residency in the Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness through the Bureau of Land Management. She is an Associate Professor of Honors Creative Writing at the Washington State University Honors College. She lives with her husband, three sons, and a bevy of pets (including a tabby named Bonsai and a husky named Tundra) in Moscow, Idaho on the rolling hills of the Palouse Prairie in another 1800s farmhouse. She has a pollinator garden full of native flowers, herbs, berries, song birds, squirrels, butterflies, bumble bees, solitary bees, and honeybees.
Homeschooling herself through high school, Lampman picked seed pinecones by the bushel to pay for her school supplies, and taught herself dendrology, ecology, and naturalist studies with her uncle’s old 1960’s college textbooks and the art of bonsai with her grandmother’s old 1940s bonsai books. She studied trees, made firewood, rode her horse (that she saddle-broke herself, although not very well), swam and camped on the wild North Fork of the Clearwater River, and backpacked with llamas into secluded high-country lakes and the depths of Hells Canyon. As an undergrad, she studied Nez Perce oral traditions and language in addition to creative writing. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho where she worked with memoirist/novelist Kim Barnes.
Lampman is the author of the novel SINS OF THE BEES (Pegasus/Simon & Schuster) and the limited-edition letterpress poetry chapbook BURNING TIME (Limberlost Press). Her short stories, poetry, and narrative essays have been published in sixty-some literary journals and anthologies such as The Normal School, Orion Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, and Women Writing the West. She has been awarded the Dogwood Literary Award in Fiction, the Everybody Writes Award in Poetry, a Best American Essays “Notable,” a Pushcart Prize special mention, a Literature Fellowship special mention by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and a wilderness artist’s residency in the Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness through the Bureau of Land Management. She is an Associate Professor of Honors Creative Writing at the Washington State University Honors College. She lives with her husband, three sons, and a bevy of pets (including a tabby named Bonsai and a husky named Tundra) in Moscow, Idaho on the rolling hills of the Palouse Prairie in another 1800s farmhouse. She has a pollinator garden full of native flowers, herbs, berries, song birds, squirrels, butterflies, bumble bees, solitary bees, and honeybees.
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March 28, 2026Gorgeous writing, complex and memorable characters, spectacularly described ecosystems, and a story with a tender, hopeful heart.
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