On Tuesday night, Canadian-born Kiwi Eleanor Catton became the youngest author ever to win the Man Booker Prize. She won for The Luminaries, which, at 830-odd pages, is also the longest book ever to have won, and will forever be the last book to have won before the prize changed its entry rules to include writers beyond the Commonwealth and Ireland.
But should you read it?
I did – more quickly than I’d suggest you do. Here’s my conversation with Brent Bambury on CBC Day 6.
On Monday, September 30, we announced the nominees for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize at a press conference at Ben McNally Books in downtown Toronto. Prize juror and 2010 prize winner Miranda Hill announced the $10,000 Journey Prize shortlist. Prize juror Alison Pick and Jan Innes, vice president, government relations, Rogers Communications, announced the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize shortlist. The winners will be announced in Toronto on November 20.
The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize nominees are:
The Journey Prize nominees are:
Here’s some of the coverage:
Hon. Hilary M. Weston welcomes guests to the announcement of the 2013 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction shortlist
On Wednesday, September 18 the shortlist for the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction was announced. For the second year, books nominated for the prize will be promoted at Loblaws stores across Canada, and so, also for the second year, we announced the finalists at a swish event at Loblaws at Maple Leaf Gardens. While the cutting of the giant Parmesan (really, it’s big) did draw its own crowd, the real stars of the morning were the five nominees.
They are:
The winner will be announced on Monday, October 21.
Here’s some of the coverage from the shortlist announcement:
CBC Live (video)
CBC Books
Globe and Mail
National Post
Quill and Quire
Toronto Star
C.E. Gatchalian accepts the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writers. Photo by Katrina Afonso.
Vancouver playwright C.E. Gatchalian was named the recipient of this year’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writers on June 26. The prize is administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada.
In his acceptance speech he dedicated the award to “difference.” “As artists and as people who identify as Queer,” he said, “we must resist sameness whenever and wherever possible.”
Read the story in the National Post
Lynn Patterson from RBC presents Laura Clarke with her prize
On May 28, 2013, at a ceremony at Toronto’s Koerner Hall, Laura Clarke was named the winner of the $5,000 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.
On May 29, Jeff Douglas read a poem from Laura’s winning collection, “Mule Variations,” on CBC Radio As it Happens. Here’s the audio.
And on June 8, Laura went on CBC Radio’s Fresh Air to talk about her poet’s journey thus far, and what it means to win an award such as this. Here’s the audio.
Congratulations to Laura and to her fellow nominees, Laura Matwichuk and Suzannah Showler.
Work by all three of the finalists is available as a free download in the iBookstore.
Mark Carney and Hon. John Baird co-host the 2013 Politics and the Pen Gala
This year’s Politics & the Pen Gala at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier welcomed 500 guests and raised more than $300,000 to support the programmes of the Writers’ Trust of Canada. It was also a swelligant evening where a good time was had by one and all.
Calgary author Marcello Di Cintio may have had a better time than most though. He was named winner of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book Walls: Travels Along the Barricades.
Here’s some of the press:
CPAC, On the Bright Side. Video footage
Ottawa Citizen. A National Party Writ Large
iPolitics.ca. Where Politics meets the Pen
CTV Morning Live interview with Marcello Di Cintio
Globe & Mail Shaughnessy Cohen Prize Nominees interview series. Taras Grescoe
Calgary Herald, feature interview with Marcello Di Cintio
Hon. Hilary M. Weston presents the prize to Candace Savage
No rest for the wicked after the Writers’ Trust Awards on November 7. Team WT jumped straight back in to glam prize-giving mode for the awarding of the second-annual Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction on Monday, November 12. The pink-carpet event was held at Toronto’s Koerner Hall.
At stake: the largest literary prize awarded annually to a work of Canadian nonfiction, and at $60,000, a prize pot bigger than the Giller.
The nominees were announced September 25. Read about that here.
The winner *drum roll* Canadace Savage for A Geography of Blood.
First they shock you, then they make you speak to a room full of people.”
Candace said as she arrived at the podium to accept her award. And then,
Mrs. Weston, I hope you understand how much your very tangible expression of support means, not just to your shortlisted authors, but to the entire literary community in Canada.”
Candace embarked on a whirlwind of publicity, including:
Canada AM
Global Saskatoon
CBC Radio One Saskatchewan Morning
CBC Live
Globe Parties
Prairie Post
Southwest Booster
Maclean’s (a neat little Twitter diary of how the night played out)
Thanks to the National Post for their “Story Behind the Story” series with the nominees and Writers’ Trust Awards hub, and for running full-page excerpts in their Comments & Ideas section in the lead-up to the announcement.
Thanks to CBC Books for being awesome media partners ad for all their #WestonPrize contesting, Q&As, audio coverage and so much more.
Looking forward to next year already (after a small literary nap, perhaps).
Shelagh Rogers hosts the 12th annual Writers' Trust Awards
On November 7, at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto, the Writers’ Trust of Canada presented six of the country’s most prestigious literary prizes at the 12th annual Writers’ Trust Awards.
The winners were:
Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize: Tamas Dobozy for Siege 13. Dobozy, who won $25,000, was shocked and delighted, and dedicated the award to his father.
Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize: Alex Pugsley, who won $10,000 for his short story “Crisis on Earth-X.”
Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award for a writer in mid-career: Nino Ricci won $25,000 and delivered a poignant speech about the writer’s lot that was subsequently printed in the Toronto Star.
The real purpose of award ceremonies like this one,” he said, “is not so much to honour particular individuals as to raise all boats, and to remind us that literature is still here, alive and kicking, for all the announcements of its impending demise.”
Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life: Jean Little, beloved author of more than 50 books for children, won $20,000. Jean’s seeing-eye dog, Honey, stood faithfully by her side as she accepted the award.
Vicky Metcalf Award for Children’s Literature: Paul Yee, the Chinese-Canadian Children’s author of Ghost Train and Tales from Gold Mountain, won $20,000. This year marked the 50th awarding of the Vicky Metcalf.
The Writers’ Trust Distinguished Contribution Award this year went to the Metcalf Foundation for their sponsorship, since its inception, of the Vicky Metcalf Award.
In total, $114 000 in prizes were given out to Canadian writers. To see what the media had to say about the event, check out the links below:
Globe and Mail (video c/o Canadian Press)
’tis the year of discord among prize juries, we are told.
With the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize and Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language Fiction lists all out, the verdict came in: an almost unprecedented level of dissenting opinion between the three juries threw Canada’s literary awards season into disarray. Or possibly into ambivalence, if one can be “thrown” into ambivalence (today’s “Guessing the Giller” article in the Globe & Mail might as well have been titled “Meh”).
“The Year of Discord Among the Literary Experts,” said the Globe & Mail on Oct. 2, noting that, “the divergence of opinion among literary experts contrasts with the solidarity that occurred last year.”
An “almost unprecedented number of 12 different books have been selected by various juries and committees,” said the Toronto Star on Oct. 26.
Really? Or is it just that last year’s lists were so dominated by two names in particular that it gave the illusion of the awards being a race between only those two books?
As the publicist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize it was my great pleasure to work with Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan (the two shortlist-dominating authors in question) in 2011. What was frustrating about last year though was that the noise surrounding those two names was such that the other nominees (there were nine of them, by the way) found themselves a little drowned out. By contrast, the 2012 shortlists with their lesser (but, see below, not by as much as you’d think) accord provide, instead of one big story, many smaller ones. And isn’t that what literary awards are here to do? To re-open the window of publicity for those authors short- and long-listed for them?
The configuration this year is different, but the stats not so much.
The Breakdown (Canadian shortlists only – I’m not including the Booker):
One notable difference: in 2011, two books were nominated for all three awards (and hence became major noise-makers), whereas in 2012 none were.
Because the Giller had a six-book shortlist in 2011 it messes with the numbers a little, but let’s assume that a five-book shortlist in 2011 would have omitted Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (by all accounts the outsider), which didn’t appear on any other lists. That would still leave us with 11 books out of a possible 15 in 2011, versus 12 books out of a possible 15 in 2012.
Conclusions
As Mark Twain said, “There are three sorts of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” 2012 may be the year of discord among the literary judges or it may be the year that award recognition managed to sprinkle some fairy dust on a greater number of books than in 2011.
Good luck tonight (Giller nominees), on Nov. 7 (Writers’ Trust nominees), and Nov. 13 (GG nominees) to each and every one of this year’s literary dozen.
Barbara Amiel Black, James Bartleman, Marni Jackson, Galen Weston and others applaud the shortlist announcement
At an elegant event at Loblaws at Maple leaf Gardens this morning (prosciutto-wrapped delicacies at 11 am!) we announced the shortlist for the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
This just a few days after we announced an arrangement with Loblaw Companies that will see the nominated books promoted in more than 200 stores across Canada (this is huge, and we’re tickled pink).
The five contenders are:
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes (HarperCollins Publishers)
Modris Eksteins, Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age (Knopf Canada)
Taras Grescoe, Straphanger: Saving our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile (HarperCollins Publishers)
JJ Lee, The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit (McClelland & Stewart)
Candace Savage, Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape (Greystone Books/David Suzuki Foundation)
Also announced was the addition of Seamus O’Regan and Barbara Amiel Black to the jury.
The winner will be announced on Nov. 12th.
Here’s a roundup of some coverage:
