Archives for category: Literary Awards

Alessandra Naccarato, winner of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Photo credit Katrina Afonso.

 

On a hot and humid May evening in Toronto, the Writers’ Trust of Canada handed out its “thing in the spring,” the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. The winner was  Alessandra Naccarato for her poetry collection “Re-Origin of Species.”

The Bronwen Wallace Award recognizes emerging writers under 35 who have yet to publish in book form. Past winners include many then-unknown but now-familiar names, such as Michael Crummey, Alissa York, Alison Pick and Jeramy Dodds.

Host Tanis Rideout (another past winner) set the perfect tone: fun, celebratory, reverential. The crowd schmoozed to classical renditions of Top 40 songs (we were in the Royal Conservatory of Music, after all) in a stunning all-glass room with views of Philosopher’s Walk and the Royal Ontario Museum. The atmosphere was fun, lively, and distinctly emerge-from-hibernationy. This was, said Tanis “our thing in the spring.”

Alessandra Naccarato won $5,000. Her fellow nominees each won $1,000. They were: Irfan Ali for “Who I Think About When I Think About You,” and Chuqiao Yang for “Roads Home.”

Find out more about the prize and this year’s nominees here.

Read stories from CBC Books, the Toronto Star and Quill and Quire here, here and here.

And check out a Facebook photo gallery from the event courtesy of the Writers’ Trust here.

Here are the three nominees chatting with me and (via the magic of Periscope) the world on the pre-ceremony “red-carpet.”

Chatting to award finalists Irfan Ali, Alessandro Naccarato and Chuqiao Yang before the ceremony. Photo credit Katrina Afonso.

 

 

 

From left: Tony Clement, Megan Leslie, Stephen Maher, Tom Power, Richard Madan and Lisa Raitt perform Sweet Caroline at the Politics & the Pen gala

 

On Wednesday night, at the Politics and the Pen Gala in Ottawa, Joseph Heath was named the winner of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives.

The event, which is a fundraiser for the Writers’ Trust of Canada, was held at Ottawa’s Fairmont Chateau Laurier and attended by 500 guests from Canada’s political, literary and arts communities.

Highlights included a “Battle of the Bands,” which was kicked off by co-hosts Hon. Tony Clement and Tom Power and joined by MPs Lisa Raitt and Megan Leslie, journalist Stephen Maher, and broadcaster Richard Madan (pictured).

The event raised more than than $330,000 for the Writers’ Trust of Canada.

The five Shaughnessy Cohen Prize nominees were:

  • Joseph Heath for Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, our Economy, and Our Lives (winner)
  • Chantal Hébert with Jean Lapierre for The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was
  • Naomi Klein for This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs the Climate
  • John Ralston Saul for The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power and Influence
  • Graham Steele for What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise – and Collapse – of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government

View photos from the event and read party recaps at Globe & MailHELLO!, Hill TimesMaclean’s, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Magazine.

Listen to Joseph Heath talk to CBC As it Happens about his book and winning the prize here and read his interview with the Globe & Mail here.

 

Award winners (l to r) Joan Thomas, Cary Fagan, Miriam Toews, Ken Babstock, Susan Musgrave, Tyler Keevil

On November 4, 2014, Canada’s literary crowd got together for the night of warm fuzzy feelings that is the annual Writers’ Trust Awards.  Held at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, the event was hosted by Globe & Mail Arts Editor Jared Bland, who shared literary anecdotes between emotional speeches from the winners. In total, $139,000 in prize money was awarded to Canadian writers. The night’s winners were:

  • Miriam Toews for All My Puny Sorrows, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
  • Tyler Keevil for “Sealskin,” which won the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize
  • Ken Babstock, who won the inaugural Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize
  • Joan Thomas, who won the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award
  • Susan Musgrave, who won the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life
  • Cary Fagan, who won the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People.

Here’s some of the media coverage:

The books nominated for the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. cr. Tom Sandler

 

On October 14, at a salon-style gathering of more than 200 guests, the 2014 fall literary season shifted into high gear with the awarding of the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The winner was Naomi Klein for her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate.

The other nominees, who each took home $5,000, were:

  • Susan Delacourt for Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them
  • Charles Montgomery for Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
  • Paula Todd for Extreme Mean: Trolls, Bullies, and Predators Online
  • Kathleen Winter for Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage

Here’s a round-up of what the media said:

 

 

 

The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize now have shortlists! And this is my fifth year at the PR end of both prizes, which also deserves an exclamation mark >> !

As usual, the nominees were announced at a buzzing-yet-cozy event at Ben McNally Books in downtown Toronto. There were publishers, there was media, there were giant book covers printed on foam-core backing. There was coffee. There was also a vat of jam that was perhaps a joke on the part of the caterers…. Either way, it got good Twitter from the assembled coffee-and-pastry hungry crowd.

The Fiction Prize nominees were announced by Jan Innes, vice president, government affairs, Rogers Communications, and Helen Humphreys, a past winner of the prize and one of this year’s jurors.

The nominees are:

  • André Alexis for Pastoral, published by Coach House Books
  • Steven Galloway for The Confabulist, published by Knopf Canada
  • K.D. Miller for All Saints, published by Biblioasis
  • Carrie Snyder for Girl Runner, published by House of Anansi
  • Miriam Toews for All My Puny Sorrows, published by Knopf Canada

The Journey Prize nominees were announced by jurors Craig Davidson and Steven W. Beattie.

Those nominees are:

  • Tyler Keevil for “Sealskin”
  • Lori McNulty for “Monsoon Season”
  • Clea Young for “Juvenile”

Here’s a sampling of what people said about the announcement:

The winners will be announced at the Writers’ Trust Awards on November 4.

Prize juror Merrily Weisbord announces a nominee for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction

A brand new book shopping list was announced this morning at Loblaws at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto: the 2014 shortlist for the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

The nominees were announced at a press conference attended by 75 guests representing the publishing community, arts and entertainment media, and our prize partners. Guests were welcomed by the Hon. Hilary M. Weston, and the five nominees were announced by jurors Charles Foran, Priscila Uppal, Merrily Weisbord and Peter Mansbridge.

The nominees are:

  • Susan Delacourt for Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them
  • Naomi Klein for This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs the Climate
  • Charles Montgomery for Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
  • Paula Todd for Extreme Mean: Trolls, Bullies and Predators Online
  • Kathleen Winter for Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage

Media coverage from the event included:

Information about the nominees and their books is available at writerstrust.com

 

 

 

Covers of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize nominated books hang above the crowd at the Politics & the Pen Gala

At a black-tie dinner at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier last week, Maclean’s political editor Paul Wells was named the popular winner (with many friends and colleagues among the 500 guests) of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006 –. You can read his acceptance speech on Macleans.ca, here.

The award is presented at the Politics & the Pen Gala, which raises in excess of $300,000 annually for the Writers’ Trust of Canada.

This year’s event was hosted (to a standing ovation after their opening skit) by Hon. Lisa Raitt, Minister of Transport, and Ms. Megan Leslie, Member of Parliament for Halifax and member of the Official Opposition. Next to the announcement of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize winner, the co-hosts’ duet of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” with specially written lyrics about being a woman on Parliament Hill, was the highlight of the evening.

Paul Wells’ fellow nominees for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize were: Margaret MacMillan for The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, Charles Montgomery for Happy City: Transforming Our Lives through Urban Design, Donald J. Savoie for Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher: How Government Decides and Why, and Graeme Smith for The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan, which won the 2013 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Media coverage for the five Shaughnessy Cohen Prize nominees included an interview series in the Globe & Mail (here) and an interview with juror Doug Saunders on CBC Radio One’s Ottawa drive-home show, All in a Day, as the Politics & the Pen gala was getting underway.

CTV Ottawa came to the cocktail reception (video clip here), and Paul Wells was dragged out of bed dark and early the morning after his win to appear on CTV Ottawa’s breakfast show, CTV Morning Live (video clip here).

If you’d like to see some photos from the night, you’re in luck, because there are LOTS.

Here’s a selection:

 

image: shaughnessy cohen prize shortlist

 

The shortlist for the 2013 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing was announced this morning.

The nominees are:

  • Margaret MacMillan for The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914
  • Charles Montgomery for Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
  • Donald J. Savoie for Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? How Government Decides and Why
  • Graeme Smith for The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan
  • Paul Wells for The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006 —

Media coverage for the shortlist included:

Canadian Press

Globe and Mail

National Post

Quill & Quire

Toronto Star

The winner will be announced at the Politics & the Pen Gala in Ottawa on April 2.

Writers' Trust Award winners (l to r) Andrew Nikiforuk, Lisa Moore, Naben Ruthnum, Colin McAdam, Barbara Reid

On November 20, 2013 the Writers’ Trust of Canada held its 13th annual Writers’ Trust Awards in the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. The big winners of the night were:

  • Colin McAdam for A Beautiful Truth, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize;
  • Naben Ruthnum for “Cinema Rex,” which won the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize;
  • Lisa Moore, who won the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award;
  • Andrew Nikiforuk, who won the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life;
  • Barbara Reid, who won the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People;
  • McClelland & Stewart, which won the Writers’ Trust Distinguished Contribution Award in recognition of having been the sponsor of the Journey Prize since its inception 25 years ago.

The Writers’ Trust Awards is always a great event to be a part of, with the feeling in the room being one of support, congratulation and celebration. The acceptance speeches were heartfelt, in some cases emotional, and spoke to the importance of awards such as these to support, nurture and also showcase Canada’s finest literary talent.

Here’s some of the media coverage:

 

Photographer: Sonia Recchia / Pimentel Photo

More than 200 members of the literary, arts and philanthropic communities gathered at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Monday, October 21, to fete the nominees and discover the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The one-hour ceremony included dramatic performances from the nominated books, a slide show of the books in locations across Canada, and original art created on the spot in response to  excerpts from the books. The event culminated, of course, in the announcement of the winner, and a “rock star party.”

Graeme Smith took the prize for his book The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan

The other nominees, who each took home $5,000, were:

  • Thomas King for The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
  • J.B. MacKinnon for Our Once and Future World: Nature As it Was, As it Is, As it Could Be
  • Andrew Steinmetz for This Great Escape: The Case of Michael Paryla
  • Priscila Uppal for Projection: Encounters With My Runaway Mother

Here’s some of the coverage: