News

April 9th, 2008

The Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist has been annouced.

Robin Blaser for The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser

Robert Majzels and Erin Moure for Notebook of Roses and Civilization (originally in French by Nicole Brossard)

David McFadden for Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David McFadden

April 5th, 2008

Well we are way behind on annoucing any Can. Lit. news - sorry for that!!  Here's loads of news to make up for that shortfall:

2008 B.C. Book Prize Nominees:

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize - Heather Burt for Adam's Peak - Mary Novik for Conceit - Shaena Lambert for Radiance - Claire Mulligan for The Reckoning of Boston Jim - David Chariandy for Soucouyant

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize - J.B. MacKinnon & Alisa Smith for 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating - Robert Bringhurst for Everywhere Being is Dancing - Don Gayton for Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden - Theresa Kishkan for Phantom Limb - Patricia E. Roy for The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize - Rita Wong for Forage - George McWhirter for The Incorrection - Christopher Patton for Ox - Arleen Pare for Paper Trail - Gillian Wingmore for Soft Geography

De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage made the shortlist of the 2008 International Impac Dublin Literary Award

2008 Commonwealth Writer's Prize Regional Winners:  Best Book - Lawrence Hill for The Book of Negroes & Best First Book - C.S. Richardson for The End of the Alphabet

February 14th, 2008

The Commonwealth Writers' Prize Canadian and Caribbean 2008 shortlist has been announced.

Best Book:

Gil Adamson (Canada) - The Outlander
Erna Brodber (Jamaica) -The Rainmaker's Mistake
Lawrence Hill (Canada) -The Book of Negroes
Robert Hough (Canada) -The Culprits
Frances Itani (Canada) - Remembering the Bones
Michael Ondaatje (Canada) - Divisadero

Best First Book:

David Chariandy (Canada) - Soucouyant
Tish Cohen (Canada) -Town House
Arley McNeney (Canada) - Post
Ameen Merchant (Canada) -The Silent Raga
C.S. Richardson (Canada) - The End of the Alphabet
Neil Smith (Canada) - Bang Crunch

November 28th, 2007

The 2008 Canada Reads selections have just been announced!

Thomas Wharton, Icefields
Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage
Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring
Mavis Gallant, The Fifteenth District
Paul Quarrington, King Leary (available soon!)

What a fantastic reading list for this/next year.  This year's edition of Canada Reads
will begin in February. Time to order and start reading all these great books!

November 27th, 2007

The 2007 Governor General's Literary Award winners have been announced.  What a great list it is!!

Fiction:  Michael Ondaatje for Divisadero and Sylvain Trudel for La mer de la Tranquillité

Poetry:  Don Domanski for All Our Wonder Unavenged and Serge Patrice Thibodeau for Seul on est

Drama:  Colleen Murphy for The December Man and Daniel Danis for Le chant du Dire-Dire

Non-fiction:  Karolyn Smardz Frost for I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad and Annette Hayward for La querelle du régionalisme au Québec (1904-1931): Vers l’autonomisation de la littérature québécoise

Translation French to English:  Nigel Spencer for Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (Marie-Claire Blais' Augustino et le choeur de la destruction )

Translation English to French:  Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné for Dernières notes (Tamas Dobozy's Last Notes and Other Stories )

Children's Literature - Text:  Iain Lawrence for Gemini Summer and François Barcelo for La fatigante et le fainéant

Children's Literature - Illustration:  Duncan Weller for The Boy from the Sun and Geneviève Côté for La petite rapporteuse de mots

November 8th, 2007

Scotiabank Giller Prize winner for 2007 is Elizabeth Hay for Late Nights on Air !!!!

October 20th, 2007

First off - I know you want to hear about the GG nominees, but let's not forget the Quebec Writers' Federation nominees.

Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction:  Liam Durcan for Garcia's Heart ; Heather O'Neill for Lullabies for Little Criminals ; and Neil Smith for Bang Crunch

Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction:  Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau for The Story of French ; Margaret Somerville for The Ethical Imagination ; and Vikki Stark for My Sister, My Self: Understanding the Sibling Relationship that Shapes Our Lives, Our Loves and Ourselves

McAuslan First Book Prize:  Angela Carr for Ropewalk ;  Nairne Holtz for The Skin Beneath ; and Neil Smith for Bang Crunch

A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry:  David McGimpsey for Sitcom ; Erin Moure for O Cadoiro ; and David Solway for Reaching for Clear

OK - now for the the Governor General's Literary Award nominees.

Fiction:  David Chariandy for Soucouyant / Barbara Gowdy for Helpless / Michael Ondaatje for Divisadero / Heather O’Neill for Lullabies for Little Criminals / M.G. Vassanji for The Assassin’s Song

Poetry:  Margaret Atwood for The Door: Poems / Don Domanski for All Our Wonder Unavenged / Brian Henderson for Nerve Language / Dennis Lee for Yesno: Poems  / Rob Winger for Muybridge’s Horse: A Poem in Three Phases

Drama:  Salvatore Antonio for In Gabriel’s Kitchen / Anosh Irani for The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black / Rosa Laborde for Leo / Colleen Murphy for The December Man (L’homme de décembre) / Morris Panych for What Lies Before Us 

Non-Fiction:  Rodrigo Bascuñán and Christian Pearce for Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent  / John English  for Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968  / Stephanie Nolen for 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa / Karolyn Smardz Frost for I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad / Bridget Stutchbury for Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them 

Translation - French to English:  Sheila Fischman for My Sister’s Blue Eyes (by Jacques Poulin) / Robert Majzels and Erín Moure for Notebook of Roses and Civilization (by Nicole Brossard) / Rhonda Mullins for The Decline of the Hollywood Empire (by Hervé Fischer) / John Murrell for Carole Fréchette: Two Plays: John and Beatrice; Helen’s Necklace (by Carole Fréchette) / Nigel Spencer for Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (by Marie-Claire Blais)

For French language finalists please see:
http://www.canadacouncil.ca/news/releases/2007/uc128366060109425415.htm 

October 9th, 2007

Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist!!

Elizabeth Hay for Late Nights on Air

Michael Ondaatje for Divisadero

Daniel Poliquin (Donald Winkler, translator) for A Secret Between Us

M.G. Vassanji for The Assassin’s Song

Alissa York for Effigy

September 18th, 2007

Just in case you didn't hear - Michael Redhill made the Man Booker Prize longlist for Consolation

But the big news is the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist:

David Chariandy for Soucouyant / Sharon English for Zero Gravity / Barbara Gowdy for Helpless / Elizabeth Hay for Late Nights on Air / Lawrence Hill for The Book of Negroes / Paulette Jiles for Stormy Weather  / D.R. MacDonald for Lauchlin of the Bad Heart / Claire Mulligan for The Reckoning of Boston Jim / Mary Novik for Conceit / Michael Ondaatje for Divisadero / Daniel Poliquin (trans. Donald Winkle) for A Secret Between Us / M.G. Vassanji for The Assassin’s Song / Michael Winter for The Architects Are Here / Richard Wright for October / Alissa York for Effigy

June 7th, 2007

Griffin Poetry Prize 2007 winner:  Don McKay for Strike/Slip

Trillium Book Award winners:

Book English Language:  Mark Frutkin for Fabrizio's Return

Book French Language:  Daniel Castillo Durante for La passion des nomads and Paul Savoie for Crac

Poetry English Language:  Ken Babstock for Airstream Land Yacht

The shortlist for the ReLit Awards has been announced. 

Short Fiction:  Skids  by Cathleen With;  The Virgin Spy by Krista Bridge;  Zero Gravity by Sharon English;  Gargoyles by Bill Gaston; The Hour of Bad Decisions by Russell Wangersky;  The Coward Files by  Ryan Arnold; Lanzmann and other stories by Damian Tarnopolsky;  Whatever Happens by Tim Conley; and Indigenous Beasts by Nathan Sellyn.

Poetry:  What You Can’t Have by Michael V. Smith; Apostrophe by Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry; Black by George Elliott Clarke; All the Lifters by Esther Mazakian; I, Nadja, and Other Poems by Susan Elmslie; Tear Down by Ali Riley; Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method by Daniel Scott Tysdal; The Good Bacteria by Sharon Thesen; and Types of Canadian Women by K.I. Press.

Novel:  Season of Iron by Sylvia Maultash Warsh;  De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage; Suddenly the Minotaur by Marie Helene Poitras; Bow Grip by Ivan E. Coyote; Orphans of Winter by Rob Ritchie; All This Town Remembers by Sean Johnston; Miss Lamp by Chris Ewart; ManBug by George K. Ilsley; and The Mole Chronicles by Andy Brown.

May 28th, 2007

The regional winners of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize have been announced. 

Canada and the Caribbean Best Book:  David Adams Richard for Friends of Meager Fortune

Canada and the Caribbean Best First Book:  D.Y. Bechard for Vandal Love

Plus poetry shortlists...

Pat Lowther Memorial Award:  Dionne Brand for Inventory;  Lynn Crosbie for Liar; Susan Elmslie for I, Nadja and Other Poems; K.I. Press for Types of Canadian Women; Sina Queyras for Lemon Hound; and Sharon Thesen for Good Bacteria

Gerald Lampert Memorial Award:  Yvonne Blomer for a broken mirror,  fallen leaf ; David Hickey for In the Lights of a Midnight Plow ; Mitchell Parry for Tacoma Narrow ; Steven Price for Anatomy of Keys ; a rawlings for Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists ; and Nick Thran for Every Inadequate Name .

May 16th, 2007

More spring book award winners! 

The 2007 Atlantic Book Awards:

Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Prize:  Linda Little for Scotch River

Dartmouth Book Award - Fiction:  Linda Little for Scotch River

Best Atlantic Published Book:  Bernard Riordon (ed.) for Bruno Bobak - The Full Palette

Bookseller's Choice Award:  Ami McKay for The Birth House

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award:  John G. Langley for Steam Lion: A Biography of Samuel Cunard

Atlantic Poetry Prize:  Steve McOrmond for Primer on the Hereafter

Dartmouth Book Award - Nonfiction:  Keith MacLaren for A Race for Real Sailors

Evelyn Richardson Prize for Nonfiction:  Linden MacIntyre for Causeway: A Passage from Innocence

The Canadian Authors Association Literary Award winners:

CAA MOSAID Technology Inc. Award for Fiction:  Richard Wagamese for Dream Wheels

CAA Award for Poetry:  Sarah Klassen for A Curious Beatitude

CAA Carol Bolt Drama Award:  Stephen Massicote for The Oxford Roof Climber's Rebellion

CAA BookTelevision Emerging Writer Award:  Annette Lapointe (Stolen )

The 2007 Trillium Book Award shortlist:

English Language Book:  Anar Ali for Baby Khaki’s Wings ; Dionne Brand for Inventory ; Bernice Eisenstein for I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors ; Mark Frutkin for Fabrizio’s Return ; Charlotte Gray for Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell ; and Wayne Johnston for The Custodian of Paradise.

Poetry:  Ken Babstock for Airstream Land Yacht ; Adam Dickinson for Kingdom, Phylum ; and Anita Lahey for Out to Dry in Cape Breton.

French Language Book:  Marguerite Andersen for Doucement le Bonheur  ; Daniel Castillo Durante for La passion de nomades ; Claude Forand for Ainsi parle le Saigneur ; Daniel Poliquin for La Kermesse ; and Paul Savoie for Crac.

April 30th, 2007

The Manitoba Writing and Publishing Award winners were announced - can you tell it's spring time....

McNally Robinson Book of the Year:  A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston.

John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer:  Anita Daher, author of Flight From Big Tangle, Flight From Bear Canyon, Racing for Diamonds and Spider's Song.

Mary Scorer Award for Best Book:  A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston.

Lansdowne Prize for Poetry:  Time Out of Mind by Laurie Block.

Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction:  Beautiful Girl Thumb by Melissa Steele.

Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-fiction:  A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston.

Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award:  Winnipeg Modern: Architecture 1945 to 1975, edited by Serena
Keshavjee.

The Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book:   A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston.

As well the B.C. Book Prizes ...

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize:  Carol Windley for Home Schooling.

Haig-Brown Regional Prize:  Katherine Gordon for Made to Measure: A History of Land Surveying in British Columbia.

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize:  Heather Pringle for The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust.

BC Booksellers' Choice Award in Honour of Bill Duthie:  David Suzuki for David Suzuki: The Autobiography.

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize:  Don McKay for Strike/Slip.

Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence:  Patrick Lane.

April 25th, 2007

The shortlists for the 2007 Alberta Literary Awards have been announced.  Here they are:

Georges Bugnet Award for Novel:  Todd Babiak for The Garneau Block ; Lynn Coady for Mean Boy ; and Chava Rosenfarb for The Tree of Life, Book Three: The Cattle Cars are Waiting 1942-1944.

Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama:  Karen Hines for Hello...Hello ; Sharon Pollock for Constance ; and Vern Thiessen for Back to Berlin.

Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction:  Rona Altrows for A Run on Hose ; Leslie Greentree for A Minor Planet for You:  and Other Stories ; and Neil McKinnon for Tuckahoe Slidebottle.

Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry:  Tim Bowling for Fathom ; Alice Major for The Occupied World ; and Birk Sproxton for Headframe: 2.

Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction:  Kathy Calvert and Dale Portman for Guardians of the Peaks: Mountain Rescue in the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains ; Cecily Devereux for Growing a Race: Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism ; and Marcello di Cintio for Poets and Pahlevans.

April 23rd, 2007

Winner of this years very prestigious (and wealthy!) British Columbia Award for Non-Fiction is Noah Richler for This is My Country, What's Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada.

April 18th, 2007

Stuart McLean has won his 3rd Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe.

April 17th, 2007

The shortlist for the 2007 Atlantic Book Awards has been announced by the Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia. 

Atlantic Poetry Prize:  Steven McOrmond for Primer on the Hereafter ;  Pete Sanger for Aiken Drum ;  and Mary Dalton for Red Ledger.

Dartmouth Book Award - Fiction:  Maureen Hull for The View from a Kite ; Stephen Kimber for Reparations ;  and Linda Little for Scotch River.

Dartmouth Book Award - Non-Fiction:  Keith McLaren for A Race for Real Sailors ; Linden MacIntyre for Causeway: A Passage from Innocence ; and M. Brook Taylor for A Camera on the Banks: Frederick William Wallace and the Fishermen of Nova Scotia.

Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize:  Amy McKay for The Birth House ; Wayne Johnston for The Custodian of Paradise ; and Linda Little for Scotch River.

Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction:  Marq de Villiers for Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather ; Linden MacIntyre for Causeway: A Passage from Innocence ; and Natalie MacLean for Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award:  John G. Langley for Steam Lion: A Biography of Samuel Cunard ; Elaine McCluskey for The Watermelon Social ; and M. Brook Taylor for A Camera on the Banks: Frederick William Wallace and the Fishermen of Nova Scotia.

April 4th, 2007

The shortlist for the 2007 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize has been announced - Great way to kick off April Poetry Month!!

Ken Babstock for Airstream Land Yacht

Don McKay for Strike/Slip

Priscila Uppal for Ontological Necessities

March 30th, 2007

The winner of the Winterset Award - the Newfoundland and Labrador writing award for excellence - this year is Kenneth Harvey for Inside

The nominees for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour were announced yesterday.

Secrets From the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean   -   JPod by Douglas Coupland    -   Cockeyed by Ryan Knighton   -   Tuckahoe Slidebottle by Neil McKinnon    -   The Passionate Gardener by Des Kennedy

March 23rd, 2007

The 2007 Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards Shortlists have been announced.

McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award:  Time out of Mind by Laurie Block;  Where the Rocks Say Your Name by Brenda Hasiuk;  The Moonlit Cage by Linda Holeman;  A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston;  and Beautiful Girl Thumb by Melissa Steele.

John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer:  Anita Daher, Brenda Hasiuk, Bartley Kives, and Michael Van Rooy.

Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Author:  Where the Rocks Say Your Name by Brenda Hasiuk;  A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston; and The Fate of Olives by Carmelo Militano.

Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher:  A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston;  Released by Margaret Macpherson;  and Winnipeg Modern: Architecture 1945 to 1975 edited by Serena Keshavjee.

Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award:  St. John's College: The Origins of Higher Education in Western Canada by J.M. Bumsted;  Queen of Diamonds by Catherine Hunter;  Winnipeg Modern: Architecture 1945 to 1975 edited by Serena Keshavjee;  Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century edited by Birk Sproxton;  and Beautiful Girl Thumb by Melissa Steele.

Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction:  Where the Rocks Say Your Name by Brenda Hasiuk;  The Moonlit Cage by Linda Holeman;  Queen of Diamonds by Catherine Hunter;  and Beautiful Girl Thumb by Melissa Steele.

Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction:  Gabriel Dumont: Memoirs edited and annotated by Denis Combet, English translation by Lise Gaboury-Diallo;   A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnston;  In Their Own Voices: Building Urban Aboriginal Communities by Jim Silver with Parvin Ghorayshi, Joan Hay, Darlene Klyne, Peter Gorzen, Cyril Keeper,Michael MacKenzie and Freeman Simard;  and Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 by Darlene Coward Wight.

Lansdowne Prize for Poetry:  Time out of Mind by Laurie Block;  Poste restante: cartes poétiques du Sénégal by Lise Gaboury-Diallo;  and A Curious Beatitude by Sarah Klassen.

March 21st, 2007 - Spring Equinox!

A number of awards news items:

B.C. Book Prize finalists:

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize:  Maxine Gadd for Backup to Babylon ; Don McKay for Strike / Slip ; Steven Price for  Anatomy of Keys ; Sharon Thesen for The Good Bacteria ; and Terence Young for Moving Day

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize:  Marilyn Bowering for What It Takes to Be Human ; Bill Gaston for Gargoyles ; Anosh Irani for The Song of Kahunsha ; Adam Lewis Schroeder Empress of Asia ; and Carol Windley for Home Schooling

Hubert Evans Non-fiction Prize:  Karsten Heuer for Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with an Arctic Herd ; Eric Miller for The Reservoir ; Heather Pringle for The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust ; Harold Rhenisch for The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century ; and Dan Zuberi for Differences That Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize:  Katherine Gordon for Made to Measure: A History of Land Surveying in British Columbia ; Jan Hare and Jean Barman for Good Intentions Gone Awry: Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission on the Northwest Coast ; Ian M. Thom, Charles C. Hill, and Johanne Lamoureux for Emily Carr ; Rachel Lebowitz for Hannus ; and Judith Williams for Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast

BC Booksellers' Choice Award:  Daina Augaitus, Nika Collison, Robert Davidson, Peter Macnair, Bill Reid and others for Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art ; Michael Kluckner and Whitecap Books for Vancouver Remembered ; Sylvia Olsen (author), Joan Larson (illustrator) for Yetsa’s Sweater ; David Suzuki for David Suzuki: The Autobiography ; and Lynne Van Luven (editor) for Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids

Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2007 Regional Winners:  Canada and the Caribbean Best Book goes to David Adams Richards for The Friends of Meagre Fortunes and the Best First Book goes to D.Y. Bechard for Vandal Love

Writers' Trust Award winners: 

Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize goes to Kenneth J. Harvey for Inside

Nereus Writers' Trust Non-fiction Prize goes to Dragan Todorovic for The Book of Revenge: A Blues for Yugoslavia

Journey Prize goes to Heather Birrell for BriannaSusannaAlana

Timothy Findley Award goes to Douglas Glover

Marian Engel Award goes to Caroline Adderson

Matt Cohen Award (Writing Life) goes to Marie-Claire Blais

March 5th, 2007

Rudy Wiebe is the winner of the Charles Taylor Literary Non-fiction Prize for Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest.

The CBC Literary Award winners were announced for 2006.

Creative Nonfiction:  Leona Theis for The Occupation of  Muriel Thompson (2nd prize to Josée Owen for Making the Cut )

Poetry:  Méira Cook for A Walker in the City (2nd prize to Kelly Norah Drukker for Still Lives )

Short Story:  Amy Jones for The People Who Love Her (2nd prize to Carrie Snyder for Red Rover, Red Rover )

February 9th, 2007

More awards News!  The shortlist has been announced for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.  Canadian finalists for the Canada and Caribbean region are:

Best Book:  Peter Behrens for The Law of Dreams ; Mark Frutkin for Fabrizio's Return ; Claire Messud for The Emperor's Children ; Nega Mezlekia for The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades ; Alice Munro for The View from Castle Rock and David Adams Richard for The Friends of Meagre Fortune.

Best First Book:  Anar Ali for Baby Khaki's Wings ; D.Y. Bechard for Vandal Love ; Rawi Hage for De Niro's Game ; Nathan Sellyn for Indigenous Beasts and Russell Wangersky for The Hour of Bad Decisions.

February 7th, 2007

The Writers' Trust of Canada has announced the finalists for their literary awards, winners to be feted in March.

Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize:  Peter Behrens for The Law of Dreams ;  Rawi Hage for De Niro's Game ;  Catherine Hanrahan for Lost Girls & Love Hotels ; Kenneth J. Harvey for Inside ; and Mary Lawson for The Other Side of the Bridge.

Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize:  Heather Birrell for "BriannaSusannaAlana" ; Lee Henderson for "Conjugation" ; and Martin West for "Cretecea" .

Nereus Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize:  Charlotte Gray for Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell ;  Barbara Kingscote for Ride the Rising Wind: One Woman's Journey Across Canada ; Noah Richler for This is My Country, What's Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada ; Dragan Todorovic for The Book of Revenge: A Blues for Yugoslavia ; and Rudy Wiebe for Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest .

February 1st, 2007

The finalists for the Charles Taylor Literary Non-fiction Prize have been announced.  This year's hopefuls are:  John English for Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau Vol. 1 1919-1968 ; Ross King for The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World ; and Rudy Wiebe for Of This Earth:  A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest. 

November 28, 2006

Winners of the 2006 Saskatchewan Book Awards. 

Book of the Year:  Michael Trussler for Encounters

Fiction:  Martha Blum for The Apothecary

Nonfiction:  Marie Elyse St. George for Once in A Blue Moon: An Artist's Life

First Book:  Annette Lapointe for Stolen

Poetry:  Daniel Scott Tysdal for Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method

Regina Book Award:  Michael Trussler for Encounters

Saskatoon Book Award:  Annette Lapointe for Stolen

Scholarly Writing:  Jim Warren and Kathleen Carlisle for On the Side of the People: A History of Labour in Saskatchewan

Prix Du Livre Francais:  Martine Noël-Maw for Amélia et les Papillons

November 23rd, 2006

Here's another book review from our in house reader, Meghan Mathieson.  Award winner De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage:

Ten thousand coffins had slipped underground and the living still danced above ground with firearms in their hands. 1

Rawi Hage’s first novel is set in a city of violence and destruction; death is expected and escape is rarely more than a dream. For protagonist Bassam, escape becomes reality, but at a terrible cost. Friendship and loyalty collide with religion, drugs and the militia in the city of Beirut torn by civil war. I read this book with great interest stimulated by a world completely unknown to me; and with a sort of fascinated horror at the lives lived there. This book inspired a deep sympathy for Bassam, George, and countless others; and an attempt at understanding the choices and actions life had forced upon them in the city which bounds their universe.

Beirut is more than just scenery; it is a character. The narrator reflects, “Beirut was the calmest city ever in a war” as he walks broken bloodied streets. 2  The many bombs cause death and devastation, but the narrator mentions the dust “everyone saw through[:] dust from the undertaker’s shovel, dust of demolition, dust of fallen walls, dust falling from Christian foreheads on holy Thursday. Dust was friendly and loved us all. Dust was Beirut’s companion." 3  The city is shadowed by bombs and choked by dust, orphaned children, and abandoned dogs of the escaped elite. The author’s ability to describe surroundings with intense clarity is even more believable when you know he too lived through this war.

The novel shows a keen awareness of the common humanity underlying religious differences: bombs fall just as carelessly on Christians and “Muslim[s, inflicting] wounds and mak[ing] more little girls’ blood flow." 4  Everyone suffers in war: little girls, Muslims, Christians, and Beirut itself, as the “city burned and drowned in red sirens, loud blood, and death." 5  The ever-present bombs are so much a part of Beirut that when Bassam did escape to France, he “longed for [his] lengthy walks under falling bombs. Bombs are not only for killing, [he] thought; bombs are like Morse code signals filled with messages, with words. But Paris has no falling bombs; Paris is a mute city”; and Bassam feels his exile deeply. 6

This exile is self-inflicted, and had been longed for as Bassam watched friends die and neighbours emmigrate. On the eve of one such departure, he recognizes that such a severance from home and family can only be permanent, for “those who leave never come back." 7  The motif of waves and water as a mode of escape is frequently repeated as Bassam prepares for, and idealizes, his escape from his home: a prison of crime and death. In his final conversation with his best friend and brother-figure George, Bassam “could only hear waves splashing over the bridge, bouncing on the car windshield, moving towards [his] feet." 8

Though they share a past, Bassam and George differ in their visions of what the future should hold. They are both unashamedly thugs; “thugs jumped the long lines for bread, stole the food of the weak, bullied the baker and caressed his daughter. Thugs never waited in line." 9  Both understand the path of the bully to be a means to an end; means for survival or means for escape. They do not hesitate at violence; as “ruthless nihilists with guns" 10 they commit “lethal, entertaining act[s] of vengeance, and [they like] it." 11  George is a thug because he believes it will ensure his survival by securing his power in Beirut; Bassam sees his crimes as essential steps towards his escape from Beirut. It is on this that their paths irrevocably diverge.

These two young men, like so many others that roam Beirut’s broken streets, are molded by their surroundings, tempered by the war that permeated their youth, and see their choices laid before them as if they are without choice. The narrator’s repetition of ‘ten thousand’ to indicate countless numbers of bombs, drug-needles, whiskeys, and kisses gives the reader a glimpse of what life in such precarious surroundings as crime ridden Beirut might be like. Hage’s lyrical prose shifts easily between delicate imagery and coarse street slang, telling us that life is not easy, life is not fair.

Rawi Hage currently resides in Montreal, but Beirut, Lebanon is the city of his birth and a familiar setting for his first novel, which has been short-listed for the Giller Prize 12 and nominated for the Governor General’s Award. 13  These honours are even more impressive when you realize that the novel was written in Hage’s third language, flavoured with his first and second throughout. Hage lived in Beirut during nine years of the Lebanese civil war, before immigrating to New York at age 18, and from there to Canada in 1992. He is also a visual artist; he studied photography at the New York Institute of Photography, and earned a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University. Though the novel is in places poorly edited due to its headlong rush to publication, it is clear that Hage is a writer to watch.

1 - Page 173 / 2 - Page 12 / 3 - Page 13 / 4 - Page 15 / 5 - http://www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca/home.htm

6 - http://www.canadacouncil.ca/prizes/ggla/   7 - Page 88 / 8 - Page 36 / 9 - Page 44 / 10 - Page 37 /  11 - Page 163 / 12 - Page 222 / 13 - Page 29

November 23rd, 2006

The winners for the 2006 Quebec Writers' Federation Awards were announced this week.

Translation Prize:  Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné for La clameur des ténèbres  (Translation of Neil Bissoondath's The Unyielding Clamour of the Night)

Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction: Sherry Simon for Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City

McAuslan First Book Prize:  Rawi Hage for De Niro's Game

A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry: Susan Elmslie for I, Nadja, and Other Poems

Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction:  Rawi Hage for De Niro's Game