New prize announced for Canadian science titles

The Fitzhenry Family Foundation, a charitable arm of the Ontario-based publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside, has unveiled a sizable new prize for authors of Canadian science titles. The Lane Anderson Prize, named after company co-founder Robert Fitzhenry’s mother (Margaret Lane) and wife (Hilda Anderson Fitzhenry), will award a total of $20,000 annually to “the very best science writing in Canada today,” in both the adult and young reading categories.

According to the press release, each of the two $10,000 awards will be determined based on “the relevance of [a book’s] content to the importance of science in today’s world, and the author’s ability to connect the topic to the interests of the general trade reader.”

Two three-person juries drawn from the Canadian academic, publishing, creative, and institutional fields will review submissions in each category, and the jury will be announced along with the winners at an event in Toronto on Sept. 15. The closing date for submissions is April 30, 2010, for books published in 2009.  A shortlist will be announced on Aug. 16.

The new award will fill a void of sorts in the Canadian science writing arena. Until now, there has only been one small prize for Canadian science writers, the Science in Society Book Awards, which handed out $1,000 annually to the best science titles for adults and young readers.