The West Coast Book Prize Society has awarded Brian Brett British Columbia’s ninth annual Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

Brett is a writer, publisher, journalist, and teacher. He initiated the B.C. Poetry in the Schools program and teaches at the University of British Columbia’s online Master’s Degree program. In 2005, he was elected chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada.

Brett is the recipient of several prestigious literary awards, including The Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the CBC Poetry Prize, and the B.C. Book Prize. Brett lives on a farm with his family on Salt Spring Island, where he wrote the 2009 bestseller, Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life (Greystone Books).

The jury members for this year’s Lieutenant Governor’s Award were novelist and poet George Bowering, writer and critic Max Wyman, and Evelyn Gillespie, owner of Laughing Oyster Books. In a press release, Bowering says, Brian Brett is the kind of man the 21st century needs. He sets a great example as a person who is mindful about the earth and its pure products, and equally mindful about the language we have been bequeathed.

Brett will receive the $5,000 award at the B.C. Book Prizes gala on May 12.