Gill, Westoll among Charles Taylor Prize nominees

Just as a pair of novels came to dominate the past fall’s literary awards season, so too has a pair of non-fiction titles, about tree-planting in the Pacific Northwest and a group of chimps living out their days in a Quebec animal sanctuary, emerged as the books to beat.

Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe (Greystone Books) by Charlotte Gill  and The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery (HarperCollins Canada) by Andrew Westoll (both of which were named Q&Q books of the year for 2011) led the nominations for the 2012 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, the shortlist for which was announced in Toronto Tuesday morning. Both titles are also on the shortlist for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction, which was unveiled last month.

The complete shortlist, as chosen by jurors Allan M. Brandt, Stevie Cameron, and Susan Renouf, is as follows:

• Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis (Knopf Canada)
• Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill (Greystone Books)
• The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit by J.J. Lee (McClelland & Stewart)
• Afflictions and Departures by Madeline Sonik (Anvil Press)
• The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery by Andrew Westoll (HarperCollins Canada)

The winner of the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize will be announced at a gala luncheon in Toronto on March 5.

Daily book biz round-up: gay YA; Gaiman YA; and more

Quiet out there today:

• Charles Taylor Prize taps original jurors for 10th anniversary
• Department of unfortunate word choices: “Jewish people don’t own the Holocaust” – Yann Martel
• The growing popularity of gay-themed YA
• Neil Gaiman wins Carnegie Medal
• Lee Siegel says that fiction has become “culturally irrelevant.” Discuss.

Some Taylor Prize feedback

Ontario bookseller Richard Bachmann has released some comments on the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction shortlist, which was announced earlier this week. In full:

Taylor shortlist unveiled

Three titles are in the running for this year’s Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction; the shortlist was announced in Toronto today. Watch Q&Q Omni later today for the full story, but in the meantime, the nominated titles are listed below, with links to Q&Q reviews where available.

• Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott (Penguin Canada)
• Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918, Volume Two by Tim Cook (Viking Canada)
• Angel of Vengeance: The “Girl Assassin,” the Governor of St. Petersburg, and Russia’s Revolutionary World by Ana Siljak (St. Martin’s Press/H.B. Fenn)

Charles Taylor Foundation gives books to America

The Charles Taylor Prize for the Literay Non-Fiction has donated almost 100 books to Canada’s embassy in Washington D.C. The gift was presented at the IFOA in Toronto. Photos courtesy of the Charles Taylor Foundation.

Carolyn Strauss, culture and outreach counsellor with the Canadian embassy in Washington, speaks to the crowd at the IFOA, with author and host for the evening, Charlotte Gray, in the background.

Charles Taylor prize administrator June Dickenson presents the books to Strauss.

Rudy Wiebe, whose book Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest won this year’s Charles Taylor prize, with Strauss.

Previewing our newest print issue

The April 2007 issue of Quill & Quire will appear in stores and in subscribers’ mailboxes over the next week or so. It includes a profile of Toronto novelist Cordelia Strube, a Special Report on Book Design, the Kids’ Announcements (listing all Canadian children’s books to be published this spring), and more. Plus our feature on Simon & Schuster Canada‘s plans to boost their presence in the Canadian market.

Learn more about the issue after the jump, and go here for subscription information.

(more…)

International Festival of Authors’ star line-up

It’s not easy to compete with the buzz around the Toronto International Film Festival in the week before its opening, so in a press release headlined: “Not to be outdone by a certain ‘other’ festival, IFOA announces own star-studded line-up,” the International Readings at Harbourfront Centre released the names of almost 100 writers who will be part of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto from October 18-28th.

Some of this year’s biggest stars will include 2006 Man Booker Prize longlist nominees Kiran Desai, Jon McGregor, Claire Messud, James Robertson, and Sarah Waters; 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winner Kate Grenville; and 2006 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction winner J.B. MacKinnon. “Also sure to leave an impression on IFOA audiences this fall are a slew of the world’s best crime and mystery writers, including Michael Connelly (Echo Park); Michael Cox (The Meaning of Night); Åsa Larsson (Sun Storm); Louise Welsh (The Bullet Trick); and Andrew Taylor (A Stain on Silence),” the release promises.

It will, of course, be much easier for the literary stars to get press as soon as J. Lo. and Brad Pitt leave town. Unless they leave town together….

Related links:
Click here for the International Readings at Harbourfront Centre homepage

At the altar of The Shark God

The Last Heathen, Charles Montgomery’s non-fiction South Pacific saga about missionaries, murder, and more, is starting to make waves internationally. It was published here in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre two years ago and won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, and last month HarperCollins issued it in the U.S. and the U.K. as The Shark God (which, frankly, strikes Quillblog as a much punchier and more intriguing title).

Montgomery’s book has been scoring appreciative reviews. The Guardian calls it a “remarkable debut … a travel story as dark and twisted as one might ever wish to hear.” And a B+ Entertainment Weekly notice says the book “offers a heady blend of history, memoir, and anthropology.” The New York Times is appreciative, too: reviewer Holly Morris says “Montgomery is a thoughtful and entertaining guide, and his story has rich layers of history and anthropology.” Morris does have one criticism, though — she wished for more “introspection” and found the book too “outward-looking.” Now that’s a complaint you don’t hear every day.

(Thanks to Bookslut.com for a couple of the links.)

Related links:
Click here for the New York Times review
Click here for the Guardian review
Click here for the Entertainment Weekly review

There’s such a lot of world to see (and write about)

The CBC Arts website, up and running again after the lockout, checks in on a group of like-minded Vancouver writers who are proponents of travel-themed non-fiction. “The group allows us to hash out these ideas and issues and to really develop in a little bubble of collegiality that we don’t have in the cruel world of freelance journalism,” says Chris Tenove, one of the members of the group. “We are trying to do something bigger in a literary sense, and in a sense to change the world, too. We’re all quite committed to social issues. It is something we share.”

Other members of the FCC (see the article for the story behind the acronym) include Douglas & McIntyre authors Charles Montgomery, who won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction early this year for his book The Last Heathen, and J.B. MacKinnon, whose Dead Man in Paradise recently earned a starred review in Q&Q. Our readers may remember that Cheri Hanson, Q&Q‘s B.C. correspondent, looked at the FCC in our May 2005 issue, in the context of the rising profile of non-fiction in Canada.

Related links:
Click here for the CBC Arts story on the FCC
Click here for the Q&Q story from May 2005