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:
- CBC Live Video
- CBC Radio One, As it Happens. Feature interview with Graeme Smith (starts at 17 min)
- CTV Canada AM
- CTV The Social
- Globe & Mail
- Hazlitt Magazine Feature interview with Graeme Smith
- National Post
- Quill & Quire
- Writers’ Trust of Canada Photo Gallery of the event (Facebook)
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