The Atlantic Book Awards Society has announced the nominees for this year’s shortlists for its 10 literary prizes.
The winners will be revealed May 21 in Charlottetown during the week-long Atlantic Book Awards and Festival.
The shortlists are:
Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature
- Nix Minus One, Jill MacLean (Pajama Press)
- The Power of Harmony, Jan L. Coates (Red Deer Press)
- The Stowaways, Meghan Marentette (Pajama Press)
APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
- Acorn Press, Ni’n na L’Nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island, Jesse Francis and A.J.B. Johnston
- Formac Publishing, Bluenose Adventure, Jacqueline Halsey; Eric Orchard, illus.
- Goose Lane Editions, Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Terry Graff, ed.
Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
- Black Loyalists: Southern Settlers of Nova Scotia’s First Free Black Communities, Ruth Holmes Whitehead (Nimbus Publishing)
- Diaries of the Acadian Deportations, No. 1: Jeremiah Bancroft at Fort Beauséjour and Grand-Pré, Jonathan Fowler and Earle Lockerby (Gaspereau Press)
- Loyalist Rebellion in New Brunswick: A Defining Conflict for Canada’s Political Culture, David Bell (Formac Publishing)
Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction
- Black Loyalists: Southern Settlers of Nova Scotia’s First Free Black Communities, Ruth Holmes Whitehead (Nimbus)
- Merry Hell: The Story of the 25th Battalion (Nova Scotia Regiment), Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914“1919, Captain Robert N. Clements; Brian Douglas Tennyson, ed. (University of Toronto Press)
- Scapegoat: The Extraordinary Legal Proceedings Following the 1917 Halifax Explosion, Joel Zemel (SVP Productions)
Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing
- Black Loyalists: Southern Settlers of Nova Scotia’s First Free Black Communities, Ruth Holmes Whitehead (Nimbus)
- The August Gales: The Tragic Loss of Fishing Schooners in the North Atlantic, 1926 and 1927, Gerald Hallowell (Nimbus)
- The Ballad of Jacob Peck, Debra Komar (Goose Lane)
Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award
- Blood on a Saint, Anne Emery (ECW Press)
- Fallsy Downsies, Stephanie Domet (Invisible Publishing)
- Waldenstein, Rosalie Osmond (Seraphim Editions)
Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration
- Susan Tooke, Lasso the Wind: Aurélia’s Verses and Other Poems by George Elliott Clarke (Nimbus)
- Leonard Paul, Pisim Finds her Miskanow by William Dumas (Portage & Main Press)
- Deanne Fitzpatrick, Singily Skipping Along by Sheree Fitch (Nimbus)
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
- Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World, Janet E. Cameron (Hachette)
- Tailings of Warren Peace, Stephen Law (Roseway Publishing)
- Turn Us Again, Charlotte R. Mendel (Roseway)
Prince Edward Island Book Award (fiction)
- Dirty Bird, Keir Lowther (Tightrope Books)
- Ghost Boy of MacKenzie House, Patti Larsen (Acorn Press)
- Riptides: New Island Fiction, Richard Lemm, ed. (Acorn)
Prince Edward Island Book Award (non-fiction)
- Lionel F. Stevenson: Fifty Years of Photographs/Cinquante ans de photographie (1962“2012), Pan Wendt (Acorn)
- The Master’s Wife: The Book and the Place, John Flood, ed. (Penumbra Press)
- Ni’n na L’Nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island, Jesse Francis and A.J.B. Johnston (Acorn)