Richard Wagamese wins First Nation Communities Read competition

First Nation Communities Read has revealed Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (Douglas & McIntyre) as the winner of the annual community-reading program.

Chosen from more than 35 submissions, a jury of librarians from First Nation public libraries in Ontario called Indian Horse “strong, humane, and engaging.”

Now in its 10th year, the First Nation Communities Read program was developed to promote and increase awareness of aboriginal authors and illustrators, and to encourage family literacy, inter-generational storytelling, and the understanding of aboriginal voices and experiences.

Public libraries in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, B.C., the Yukon, and Northwest Territories will promote the program with a poster featuring Indian Horse. Wagamese will visit First Nation communities in Ontario and participate in other First Nation Communities Reads activities.

Atlantic Book Award winners announced

The winners of the Atlantic Book Awards were announced last night at a celebration hosted by CBC Radio’s Louise Renault.

The winners are:

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature
Live to Tell, Lisa Harrington (Dancing Cat Books)

Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association’s Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
The Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini, Bruce McNab (Goose Lane Editions)

Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
The Ocean Ranger: Remaking the Promise of Oil, Susan Dodd (Fernwood Publishing)

Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction in Memory of Robbie Robertson
French Taste in Atlantic Canada 1604–1758: A Gastronomic History/ Le goût français au Canada atlantique 1604-1758: une histoire gastronomique, Anne Marie Lane Jonah and Chantal Véchambre (Cape Breton University Press)

Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing
In Search of R.B. Bennett, P.B. Waite (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

E.J. Pratt Poetry Award
Paradoxides, Don McKay (McClelland & Stewart)

Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)
Anna from Away, D.R. MacDonald (HarperCollins Canada)

Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration
I Is for Island:  A Prince Edward Island Alphabet, Hugh MacDonald; Brenda Jones, illus. (Sleeping Bear Press)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
Dirty Bird, Keir Lowther (Tightrope Books)
atlantic-book-award-winners-announced

Rogers Communication Award for Non-fiction 
In the Field, Joan Sullivan (Breakwater Books)

CBA announces Libris Awards shortlists

The Canadian Booksellers Association has revealed the nominees for this year’s Libris Awards. Voted by independent booksellers, the awards recognize literary achievement and contributions from members of the book industry.

The winners will be announced June 3 at the Toronto Congress Centre. This is the second year the CBA is holding its annual conference and awards in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada’s STORE trade show. Last October, CBA members voted to join RCC, and in March, the organization served notice with Industry Canada to surrender its charter.

This year, Lifetime Achievement Awards will be presented to Alice Munro and Scotiabank Giller Prize founder Jack Rabinovitch.

The nominees are:

Author

• Terry Fallis
• Will Ferguson
• Alice Munro
• Nancy Richler

Fiction

• 419, Will Ferguson (Penguin Canada)
• Dear Life, Alice Munro (McClelland & Stewart)
• Revenge of the Vinyl Café, Stuart Maclean (Penguin Canada)
• The Imposter Bride, Nancy Richler (HarperCollins Canada)

Non-fiction

• The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King (Doubleday Canada)
• The Power of Why, Amanda Lang (HarperCollins Canada)
• The Universe Within, Neil Turok (House of Anansi Press)

Bookseller

• BookLore Stores (Orangeville, ON)
• Galiano Island Books (Galiano Island, BC)
• Owl’s Nest Books (Calgary, AB)

Specialty Bookseller

• Ella Minnow Books (Toronto, ON)
• Mabel’s Fables (Toronto, ON)
• Kidsbooks (Vancouver, BC)

Campus Bookseller

• Queen’s University Campus Bookstore (Kingston, ON)
• UBC Bookstore (Vancouver, BC)
• University of Toronto Bookstore (Toronto, ON)

Young Reader

• Such Wicked Intent, Kenneth Oppel (HarperCollins Canada)
• The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen, Susan Nielsen (Tundra Books)
• Uncle Wally’s Old Brown Shoe, Wallace Edwards (Orca Books)

Editor

• Andrea Magyar, Penguin Canada
• Nita Pronovost, Doubleday Canada
• Iris Tupholme, HarperCollins Canada

Sales Rep

• Kathryn Wardropper, HarperCollins Canada
• Christina Winfield, Scholastic Canada
• Morgen Young, Ampersand

Picture Books

• The Stamp Collector, Jennifer Lanthier; François Thisdale, illus. (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• This Is Not My Hat, Jon Klassen (Candlewick Press)
• Scaredy Squirrel Prepares for Christmas, Mélanie Watt (Kids Can Press)

Distributor

• North 49 Books
• Penguin Canada
• Raincoast

Small Press 

• Coach House Books
• Cormorant Books
• Harbour Publishing

Publisher

• HarperCollins Canada
• House of Anansi Press
• Penguin Canada
• Random House of Canada
• Scholastic Canada

Gaston, Hayes, de Leeuw win B.C. Book Prizes

The Government House in Victoria hosted the 29th annual B.C. Book Prizes this past Saturday, with a total of $24,000 being awarded.

Bill Gaston was the recipient of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for his novel The World (Hamish Hamilton Canada). Gaston teaches at the University of Victoria, and his fiction has won the ReLit Award and the CBC Canadian Literary Award.

Bill Gaston (photo: Monica Miller)

Derek Hayes’s British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas (Douglas & McIntyre), which won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia earlier this year, took home the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize.

Sarah de Leeuw’s poetic approach to erotic exploration of landscape in Geographies of a Lover (NeWest Press) won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. De Leeuw was awarded the CBC Literary Award for her creative non-fiction in 2009.

Other B.C. Book Prize winners include:

Hubert Evans Non-fiction Prize: Geoff Meggs and Rod Mickleburgh, The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972—1975 (Harbour Publishing)

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize: Alan Woo; Isabelle Malenfant, illus., Maggie’s Chopsticks (Kids Can Press)

Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize: Caroline Adderson, Middle of Nowhere (Groundwood Books)

Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award: Shelley Fralic, with research by Kate Bird, Making Headlines: 100 Years of The Vancouver Sun (The Vancouver Sun)

Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence: Lorna Crozier and Sarah Ellis.

Manitoba Book Awards announced

The winners of 12 Manitoba Book Awards were announced at a gala in Winnipeg last evening, with poet Méira Cook winning the $5,000 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for her first novel, The House on Sugarbush Road (Great Plains Publications).

Cook won over David Bergen’s The Age of Hope (HarperCollins Canada), which was nominated for three prizes. Bergen took home the two other prizes he was nominated for: the $5,000 Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the $3,500 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction from Manitoba.

Dennis Cooley, the poet and author of more than 15 books, won the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The other winners are:

• Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction: Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art, by Darlene Coward Wight (Douglas & MacIntyre/Winnipeg Art Gallery)
• Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher: Thunder Road, by Chadwick Ginther (Ravenstone/Turnstone)
• McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award, older category: The Green-Eyed Queen of Suicide City, by Kevin Marc Fournier (Great Plains)
• John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer: Kristian Enright
• Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry: The Politics of Knives, by Jonathan Ball (Coach House Books)
• Best Illustrated Book of the Year: Imagining Winnipeg: History through the Photographs of L.B. Foote, by Esyllt Jones, design by Doowah Design (University of Manitoba Press)
• Manuela Dias Book Design of the Year: Warehouse Journal Vol. 21, edited and designed by Nicole Hunt and Brandon Bergem (U of M Faculty of Architecture)
• Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book: Sonar, by Kristian Enright (Turnstone Press)
• Prix Littéraire rue-Deschambault: La Révolution Tranquille, by Raymond Hebert (Les Éditions du Blé)

Tamara Faith Berger wins Believer Book Award

The Believer magazine has named Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead (Coach House Books), one of Q&Q‘s books of the year, as the “strongest and most underappreciated” book of 2012.

Nominees for the annual award are submitted by readers. The winner is selected by the magazine’s editors, who praised the book for its handling of race, class, and other “cultural conundrums.”

A full announcement of the award will appear in the May issue of The Believer.

Canadian kids’ books win at international South Asia Book Awards

Two Canadian titles have won this year’s South Asia Book Awards for Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

The Rumor (Tundra Books), written by Anushka Ravishankar and illustrated by Kanyika Kini, is the winner for books geared toward pre-kindergarten to Grade 4 readers.

Deborah Ellis’s non-fiction title, Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-ending War (Groundwood Books), is the winner for books geared toward Grade 5–12 readers.

Organized by the South Asia National Outreach Consortium, the awards are presented to a book that “accurately and skillfully portrays South Asia or South Asians in the diasporas, that is the experience of individuals living in South Asia, or of South Asians living in other parts of the world.”

The winners will receive their prizes at a ceremony in Madison, Wisconsin, on Oct. 19.

Cassie Stocks wins Leacock medal

Cassie Stocks has won the 2013 Leacock Memorial Medal for humour for her debut novel Dance, Gladys, Dance (NeWest Press).

The other shortlisted titles were:

• Terry Fallis, Up and Down (McClelland & Stewart)
• Jonathan Goldstein, I’ll Seize the Day Tomorrow (Penguin Canada)
• Andrew Kaufman, Born Weird (Random House Canada)
• William Whitehead, Words to Live By (Cormorant Books)

Stocks will receive her $15,000 prize at the Leacock gala dinner, June 8 in Orillia, Ontario.

Anakana Schofield wins Amazon.ca First Novel Award

Vancouver-based Anakana Schofield was announced as the winner of the 2012 Amazon.ca First Novel Award yesterday evening. The Irish-Canadian author of Malarky (Biblioasis) was presented with a $7,500 cheque at a ceremony hosted by Jian Ghomeshi at Toronto’s Four Seasons Hotel.

The other finalists for the award were Marjorie Celona for Y (Hamish Hamilton Canada), Scott Fotheringham for The Rest Is Silence (Goose Lane Editions), Pasha Malla for People Park (House of Anansi Press), and Kim Thúy for Ru (Random House Canada).

The jury comprised The Writers’ Union of Canada executive director John Degan, author Alexei Zentner, and Meaghan Strimas, academic coordinator for creative writing at the University of Guelph. The jury selected the winner from a shortlist chosen by Quill & Quire editor Stuart Woods.

Canadian Science Writers’ Association awards best science books of 2012

The Canadian Science Writers’ Association has announced the winners of its annual book awards. Fatal Flaws (HarperCollins Canada) by Jay Ingram, former host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet, won the general audience award. Helaine Becker’s The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea (Kids Can Press) won the youth book award. Each winner receives $1,000.

The awards honour outstanding contributions to science writing intended for children/middle grades (ages 8-12 years) and for the general public.

The awards will be presented June 7 during the CSWA annual conference in Montreal.