Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
This year’s winner is M.G. Vassanji, for A Place Within: Rediscovering India.
(Doubleday Canada; distributed by Random House of Canada)
The jury comments, “An utterly brilliant, evocative memoir that ranges across the landscapes of culture, memory, identity and history. M.G. Vassanji’s style – diverse and playful – brings the reader along effortlessly, illuminating the ramshackle roots of self, family, and culture. An outstanding book of self-reflection and persistent insight, A Place Within is the resonant chronicle of a sage, a traveler, a pilgrim.”
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Thursday, November 12th, 2009
The longlist for the BC Award for Canadian Nonfiction has been announced. This is Canada’s most lucrative prize for nonfiction.
One hundred and forty-nine titles were nominated for the $40,000 prize by publishers from across the country. The jury panel has selected the following longlist of 11 books:
Burmese Lessons: A Love Story, by Karen Connelly, Random House Canada
Coal Black Heart: The Story of Coal and the Lives it Ruled, by John DeMont, Doubleday Canada
Egg On Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship, by Denise Chong, Random House Canada
Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying, by Wayson Choy, Doubleday Canada
Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir, by Lorna Crozier, Greystone Books
The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, by Ian Brown, Random House Canada
The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, by Eric Siblin, House of Anansi Press
The Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human - Animal Relationships, by Erika Ritter, Key Porter Books
The Ice Passage: A True Story of Ambition, Disaster, and Endurance in the Arctic Wilderness, by Brian Payton, Doubleday Canada
The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, by Kenneth Whyte, Vintage Canada
Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, by Brian Brett, Greystone Books
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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
And Russell Wangersky is the winner, for his memoir, Burning Down the House. See the press release here.
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Sunday, November 1st, 2009
The shortlist for this year’s Edna Staebler Award has been announced. A list of nominees, with the jury’s comments:
- The Darien Gap: Travels in the Rainforest of Panama (Harbour Publishing) by Martin Mitchinson. The Darien Gap is the fascinating story of one man’s trek into the heart of the Panamanian rainforest. As the author journeys deeper into the unknown, by foot and canoe, his narrative skillfully weaves together the region’s history of European exploration and exploitation, its modern-day social and cultural realities, and his personal search for understanding in a jungle paradise that is both welcoming and dangerous.
- Lost: A Memoir (Key Porter Books) by Cathy Ostlere. Intensely lyrical, hypnotic and haunting, Cathy Ostlere’s memoir of personal loss is unafraid to take risks. The rich language of Lost pulls the reader into an intimate and singular state of mind, into a place “where time has collapsed” and a fierce gravity takes hold. This is a book that refuses easy consolation, taking us beyond a traditional tragic ending to reconsider our understanding of love, responsibility and loyalty.
* Note: Cathy is interviewed on this site, here.
- Burning Down the House: Fighting Fire and Losing Myself (Thomas Allen Publishers) by Russell Wangersky. Burning Down the House offers a crystal-clear portrait of a man who, through his career as a firefighter, becomes addicted to the rush of danger. In a narrative stacked with house fires, car wrecks and various other human tragedies, Russell Wangersky portrays the emotional contingencies and lingering trauma that slowly begin to pull his life apart. This is a powerful book that illuminates the darker natures of those whom we trust with our lives.
* Note: Russell is interviewed on this site, here.
- The Riverbones: Stumbling After Eden in the Jungles of Suriname (McClelland & Stewart) by Andrew Westoll. Set in the steamy jungles of Suriname, The Riverbones charts the colonial legacy of South America as much as it explores the beauty and peril of a geographical region. This is a memoir that locates its own “heart of darkness” in the author’s self-reflexive obsession with the tragedies of twenty-first century eco-tourism. Westoll’s exploration of the exotic is tempered with an awareness of what it means to trespass in a land that is not one’s own.
* Note: Andrew is interviewed on this site, here.
As judge Tanis MacDonald remarks: “The books that are the finalists for this award are evidence that the memoir, in all its political, personal and contemplative glory, is a force in Canadian non-fiction writing.” Congratulations to all the nominees.
Tags: Awards, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel Writing
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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
The nonfiction nominees are:
- Randall Hansen, Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 (Doubleday Canada)
- Trevor Herriot, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds (HarperCollins Canada)
- Eric Margolis, American Raj: Liberation or Domination? (Key Porter Books)
- Eric Siblin, The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece (House of Anansi Press)
- M.G. Vassanji, A Place Within: Rediscovering India (Doubleday Canada)
Herriot and Siblin are also on the Writers’ Trust list.
Forgive me for asking, but where are the women on this list?
Lots of women in the fiction category. Only one in poetry, alas - but a worthy contender, the amazing Sina Queyras.
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