Pauls Toutonghi, author of The Refugee Ocean and Dog Gone, has been awarded the 2025 Krisjans Barons Prize by the World Association of Free Latvians’ Cultural Foundation and Council (or, in the Latvian, PBLA KF&P), for his contributions as a Latvian-American author through books that “reflect the lives of immigrants, including the fates of Latvians.”
The PBLA prizes are given every November around the anniversary of the founding of the Latvian state and honor “those people who dedicate their time, energy, and resources to the preservation of Latvian identity and culture and the building of the nation's self-confidence.”
See more at the World Association of Free Latvians online, here, and learn more about The Refugee Ocean (Simon & Schuster, 2023) here and Dog Gone (Knopf, 2016) here.
