We are thrilled to share that Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific by Coll Thrush is a 2026 Pacific Northwest Book Awards winner! Sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) and selected by a committee of independent booksellers, the awards recognize literary excellence from writers in the region.

“Coll Thrush retells Graveyard of the Pacific shipwreck stories to include colonial ambitions and Indigenous perspectives that have not been shared in this way before,” the awards committee wrote. “Meticulously researched, these stories tell of seafaring settlers and the personalized aftermath of disaster, exposing territorial ambitions and a shaping of the truth that the spoils may go to the victors. This is a groundbreaking, compassionate work and a valuable contribution to the historical canon of the Pacific Northwest.”

“My goal has been to leave the door open for the next writer, in the knowledge that history is a collective endeavor: we are all engaged in it, in the books we read, the stories we tell, and the places we love.”

—Coll Thrush

Wrecked is a provocative recasting of shipwreck tales from the Northwest Coast as encounters between colonial powers and Indigenous communities. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as the notorious Columbia River bar have resulted in more than two thousand shipwrecks, earning the coastal areas of Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island the moniker “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Beginning with a Spanish galleon that came ashore in northern Oregon in 1693 and continuing into the recent past, Wrecked includes stories of many vessels that met their fate along the rugged coast and the meanings made of these events by both Indigenous and settler survivors and observers.

In an essay for PNBA’s NW Book Lovers, Thrush asks, “What does it mean for someone like me to claim allegiance to a region that historically speaking is not mine? When a settler says, ‘I’m home,’ what cultural and political work does such a statement do?

“Wrecked, in which I used the tides as a metaphor for the comings and goings of empire, ends with [the question] ‘Is the tide still coming in, or is it going out?’ as a way to think about what might come after the interruption of settler colonialism. My goal has been to leave the door open for the next writer, in the knowledge that history is a collective endeavor: we are all engaged in it, in the books we read, the stories we tell, and the places we love.”

Coll Thrush is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and founding co-editor of the Indigenous Confluences book series at the University of Washington Press. He is the author previously of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, a 2008 Washington State Book Award winner, and Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire.

For information on upcoming events with the author, please visit our events calendar.