Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Awards
Sounds like the Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Awards are in trouble, unless they can come up with a corporate sponsor. Is this another example of literary nonfiction not getting the respect it deserves? Here is John Barber, in the Globe and Mail:
Like the Governor-General’s awards, the Writers’ Trust also honours non-fiction. This year’s nominees are Brian Brett of British Columbia, author ofTrauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life; Wade Davis of Washington, D.C., and “northern British Columbia,” for The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World; Regina’s Trevor Herriot for Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds ; Erika Ritter of Toronto forThe Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships ; and Eric Siblin of Montreal for The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece .
The group’s one lament is that no corporate sponsor has come forward to finance the $25,000 non-fiction prize, which the trust finances from a diminishing amount of private donations. “We obviously can’t keep doing that,” Oravec said. “We’re going to be in big trouble.”
Tags: Awards
