Charlotte Gill’s memoir about tree-planting in the Pacific Northwest is the winner of the 2012 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-fiction. Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe, published by Greystone Books, was awarded the $40,000 prize at a ceremony in Vancouver on Monday.

Chosen as one of Q&Q‘s books of the year for 2011, Eating Dirt was also nominated for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction and is a finalist for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, the winner of which will be announced March 5.

The jury, which comprised former Vancouver Public Library city librarian Paul Whitney, former Vancouver Sun editor-in-chief Patricia Graham, and author and editor Shari Graydon, praised Gill for her vivid descriptions of the forest and for “using intelligence, verve, and humour to illuminate the dangers that live within, and threaten from without.

Last fall, Q&Q’s Sue Carter Flinn sat down with Gill to discuss the book. You can listen to the interview here.