2001 Governor General's Award Winners and Nominees

Northwest Passages congratulates all the nominees for the 2001 Governor General's Literary Awards!

The following is a complete list of all the nominees, and winners, sorted by category, along with the respective jury's comments on each nominated book.

Fiction (English):

Winner: Richard B. Wright, for Clara Callan (Harper Flamingo Canada)
A brilliant evocation of an era, wrought from the ordinary lives of two sisters brought up in a small town. Wright's voice is lucid and completely entrancing.

Yann Martel Life of Pi (Knopf)
In Life of Pi, Yann Martel vibrantly recasts the old story of the shipwrecked sailor. His tools are wit, invention and immense zest.

Tessa McWatt, for Dragons Cry (The Riverbank Press)
Dragons Cry is a lyrical evocation of history and memories drawn from characters that move between places and cultures. McWatt explores a fractured family with sympathy and courage.

Jane Urquhart, for The Stone Carvers (McClelland & Stewart)
An ambitious and beautifully written reconstruction of the history of Upper Canada. Urquhart's characterization is intricately rendered and finely researched.

Thomas Wharton, for Salamander (McClelland & Stewart)
Thomas Wharton challenges our ideas of reading, writing and human invention in this witty and challenging novel. Blending the best of modernism and post-modern storytelling, Salamander playfully embraces a richly imagined world beyond the mundane.

Fiction (French)

Lauréat: Andrée A. Michaud, for Le ravissement (Les éditions de L'instant même)

Marie-Claire Blais, for Dans la foudre et la lumière (Les Éditions du Boréal)
One of the most significant novels to come along in recent years. Her writing sweeps like lava through a drift of epochs, civilizations and continents. A majestic work, a monument erected to human dignity and against all of the forms of violence that try to deny it.

Pan Bouyoucas, for L'autre (Les éditions Les Allusifs)

Rachel Leclerc, for Ruelle Océan (Les Éditions du Boréal)

Poetry (English):

Winner: George Elliott Clarke, for Execution Poems (Gaspereau Press)
Clarke twists the relation between criminality and punishment, between literary and vernacular speech, thus shaping a tragic and audacious book from the legacy of racial violence.

Anne Carson, for Men in the Off Hours (Knopf Canada)
The classical and the contemporary television of war maintains its full complexity in a series of dazzling poetic sequences that are intercut with essays. The works extend the capabilities of lyric voice and challenge the cultural negation of women in public experience.

Phil Hall, for Trouble Sleeping (Brick Books)
A tense and deeply resonant representation of vulnerability and place, this exploration of childhood in rural Ontario transcends autobiography to show how the psyche endures the effacement of poverty, violence and shame. Hall suspends narrative prose fragments and intensely-concentrated lyric in a troubling counterpoint.

Robert Kroetsch, for The Hornbooks of Rita K. (The University of Alberta Press)
The Hornbooks of Rita K. is a poetic mystery, witty, deft, passionate, in which the poet searches for an elusive lover and finds instead the way we are split against ourselves. Notions of poetry, the poet and the book itself are hilariously knocked off their hooks.

Steve McCaffery, for Seven Pages Missing (Coach House Books)
A handbook for the potential of linguistic futures, Seven Pages Missing deliberately turns from the false fields of stable meaning and biographical intent to build incredibly dense and varied word-music.

Poetry (French)

Tania Langlais, for Douze bêtes aux chemises de l'homme (Éditions Les Herbes rouges)

Hélène Monette, for Un jardin dans la nuit (Les Éditions du Boréal)

Stefan Psenak, for La beauté (Le Nordir)

Jean-Philippe Raîche, for Une lettre au bout du monde (Les Éditions Perce-Neige)

Drama (English):

Winner: Kent Stetson, for The Harps of God (Playwrights Canada Press)
An epic tragedy in three acts about the Great Newfoundland Sealing Disaster of 1914. Using poetic, musical and authentic language, Stetson charts the passion, stupidity, nobility and humanity of those who survived and those who perished.

Mark Brownell, for Monsieur d'Eon (Playwrights Canada Press)
Monsieur d'Eon charts the rise and fall of a gender-switching aristocrat who navigates the "Byzantine" intrigue of 18th century Europe. A satirical romp that skewers notions of power, perception and patriotism.

Clem Martini, for A Three Martini Lunch (Red Deer Press)
In these three interrelated plays, Clem Martini's characters struggle with public and private dilemmas on lawns, backyards and rooftops. Hilarious and poignant, the writing crackles with irony and wisdom.

Michael Redhill, for Building Jerusalem (Playwrights Canada Press)
On New Year's Eve 1899, four luminaries of the 19th century are forced to spend the evening together. Playful, elegant and provocative, Building Jerusalem challenges our certainties about future ramifications of our present actions.

Jason Sherman, for An Acre of Time: The Play; inspired by the book of the same title by Phil Jenkins (Playwrights Canada Press)
A surveying team uncovers a hundred years of history on one acre of land near the Ottawa River. Underscored with grief and infused with hope, An Acre of Time is an elegy to vanished peoples and unfulfilled lives.

Drama (French):

François Archambault, for Code 99 (Dramaturges Éditeurs)

Réjane Charpentier, for Un Autre Monde (Lanctôt éditeur)

Michel Ouellette, for "Requiem", in Requiem suivi de Fausse route (Le Nordir)

Non-fiction (English):

Susan Crean, for The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr (Harper Flamingo Canada)

Ross A. Laird, for Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft (Macfarlane Walter & Ross)

Alberto Manguel, for Reading Pictures: A History of Love and Hate (Knopf Canada)

Jack Todd, for The Taste of Metal: A Deserter's Story (Harper Flamingo Canada)

Non-fiction (French):

Jacques Allard, for Le roman du Québec : Histoire, perspectives, lectures (Éditions Québec Amérique)

Michel Biron, for L'absence du maître : Saint-Denys Garneau, Ferron, Ducharme (Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal)

Madeleine Gagnon, for Les Femmes et la guerre (VLB éditeur)

Jacques B. Gélinas, for La globalisation du monde : laisser faire ou faire? (Les Éditions Écosociété)