The Outdoor Writers Association of California (OWAC) has announced the winners of its 2026 Excellence in Craft Awards (EIC). The honors recognize professional outdoor journalism and media, judged by non-member peers who didn’t know whose work they were reading. Winning entries were published in 2025, and books were published between 2024 and 2025.

“The Outdoor Writers Association of California 2026 Excellence In Craft awards demonstrated a level of professionalism beyond expectation,” said longtime member and Treasurer Bob Semerau, OWAC’s former Executive Director. “The quality of the writing and photography, along with the breadth and depth of the stories told, was rewarding for our panel of judges to consider. Expressing our love of the outdoors through our work is deep in the heart of every OWAC member.”

Writer of the Year: Nancy Sorrells

Nancy Sorrells earned OWAC’s top individual honor. The board picks the Writer of the Year from a weighted average of category results. Sorrells took first place in Feature Article for “Lessons Learned on the Trail,” second in News Article for “New Mexico Plant Adaptations in Black & White,” and second in Photo/Artwork, Nature for “In for a Landing.” That range across features, news and photography is what the award celebrates.
 

The Winners

More about each of the honorees below.

Meet the Honorees

Alexia Retallack won first in News with her piece on toxic algae mats, a practical warning about cyanobacteria blooms on the American River, Folsom Lake and Lake Natoma. A State Parks scientist explains how to protect kids and dogs, and why boiling or filtering water won’t remove the toxins. (Link to PDF*)

Nancy Sorrells appears three times on this list. Her Daily News-Record column, “Lessons Learned on the Trail,” turns a July hike gone wrong at Shenandoah’s Hazel River Falls (ten hours and nearly 15 miles on the wrong trail) into practical safety advice. Her article on plant adaptations in New Mexico explores how plants thrive on a 5,000-year-old lava flow and in the shifting gypsum dunes of White Sands, illustrated with her own photographs. Add her nature photograph “In for a Landing,” and the result is a writer who is as good with a lens as with a keyboard.

Bob Gaines took second in features with “Pyramid Lake, Nevada,” a California Fly Fisher destination piece that follows the lake’s giant Lahontan cutthroat trout from their disappearance in the 1940s to the rediscovery of the Pilot Peak strain and today’s trophy fishery, anchored by his own 33½-inch catch. (Link to PDF*)

Rebecca Ramirez earned third place for “The Myth of Tehipite,” a first-person account of a six-day backpacking and fly-fishing trip into the Sierra’s remote Tehipite Valley, where she chose to cast hookless flies beneath the granite dome and reflected on a landscape scarred by fire and bark beetles. (Link to PDF*)

Shawn Bell won the Books category with the three-edition Exploring California’s Historic Landmarks, GPS-guided guidebooks to more than 1,100 official state landmarks, from Monterey’s Custom House to San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts.

Phil Reedy swept both photo categories: first in People for “Ruby Mountains Springtime” and first in Nature for “Winter Magic – Yosemite National Park.”

Carrie Wilson, OWAC’s president, took second in People photography with her portrait of a Peruvian woman spinning alpaca wool in the Andes.

Chuck Graham won the California Conservation award with “Path of the Pronghorn,” a Carrizo Plain story on how The Nature Conservancy’s purchase of Las Piletas Ranch, the first step toward a nearly 600,000-acre San Andreas Corridor, is giving North America’s fastest land mammal room to roam.

Peter Schroeder won first in Conference-Related work with “Giant Slayers,” a look at the drought, wildfire and bark-beetle threats facing the 25,000 giant sequoias of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

Barbara Steinberg, a member of OWAC’s board, took second with “Destination Visalia Is a Heartfelt Community.” The piece treats Visalia as both a historic Central Valley town and the gateway to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, with stops at the restored Fox Theatre, the Darling Hotel and the murals of nearby Exeter.

*PDFs supplied where articles may be behind paywalls.

Why Professional Outdoor Media Matters Now

These awards arrive as editorial work is changing. One 2026 industry roundup notes that long-form travel features are being commissioned less often, and that freelance rates are struggling to keep pace with inflation while AI reduces commissions. Even so, paying outlets exist: Travel + Leisure is reported to pay up to $1 a word, with most of its writing done by freelancers.

Meanwhile, adventure travel is expected to boom again in 2026, with hiking, mountaineering and camping leading the way, and slow, purposeful travel is gaining ground. Readers want to be in the outdoors, and they want trusted, reported, well-made storytelling from real people that gets them there.

That is OWAC’s lane. Founded in 1986, OWAC is a nonprofit of professionals working across print, broadcast, photography, video and digital media. Awards require remunerated, published work, so winning means something in the marketplace.

Your Turn, 2027 Entrants

Entry is open to current OWAC members, and cash awards are paid: $100 for first place and $50 for second. There are eight categories, including Audio/Video, which was not awarded this year. Entries are $25 for the first and $10 for each additional, and there is no limit on entries per category. Next year’s call is likely to open in March, so now is the time to line up your best 2026 work.

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