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Donner Prize increases purse to $50,000

The Donner Canadian Foundation has increased the purse for its prize in public policy writing from $35,000 to $50,000. Allan Gotlieb, chair of the foundation, also announced Monday that the amount awarded to shortlisted authors will go up to $7,500, from $5,000, in time for the 2012 contest.

“The increase in prize monies reinforces our ongoing commitment to encouraging and celebrating excellence in public policy writing by Canadians, on topics of great importance to Canadians,” Gotlieb stated via press release.

The statement included a call for submissions (with a deadline of Nov. 30). The jury for the 2012 prize was also introduced: Anne McClellan, former Liberal MP for Edmonton Centre; Marcel Boyer, professor emeritus at Université de Montréal; Wendy Dobson, co-director of the Institute for International Business at the University of Toronto; Kevin Lynch, vice-chair at BMO Financial Group; and Denis Stairs, professor emeritus at Dalhousie University.

Launched in 1998, the Donner Prize puts the spotlight on “the best public policy thinking, writing and research by a Canadian, and the role it plays in determining the well-being of Canadians and the success of Canada as a whole” and provides a platform for Canadian writers and researchers in public policy who “make an original and meaningful contribution to policy discourse.”

Previous winners include Arrival City by Doug Saunders (Knopf Canada), The Politics of Linkage by Brian Bow (UBC Press), and Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North by Ken S. Coates, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, William R. Morrison, and Greg Poelzer (Thomas Allen Publishers).

The cash infusion makes the Donner Prize one of the richest awards for non-fiction in Canada and the highest amount for a yearly prize for policy-related writing. The Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction and the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction, which recognize literary non-fiction, have top prizes of $60,000 and $40,000, respectively. The Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing offers $25,000 to the winner and $2,500 to finalists.

The shortlist will be revealed in March, and the winner announced at a Toronto gala in May.

By

November 8th, 2011

9:00 am

Category: Book news

Tagged with: Donner Prize