Congratulations to our contest winners for the inaugural “Expose Your Prose” contest-
Darci Gautreau for the Youth Category &
Emily Ridlington for the Adult Category.
Thanks to all who submitted stories and poems- what a wealth of talent we have in this community!
Winner of the Sackville Exposed Weekend
“Expose Your Prose” Contest Youth Category
Submitted by Darci Gautreau, Age 12
Gilmour wins GG for fiction
by Mary Soderstrom
Nov. 16, 2005: The Governor General’s Literary Award for English fiction has gone to David Gilmour, a Torontonian who is very well known in media circles, but the two coasts, the centre of the country, and a new Canadian were also big winners in the 2005 awards, announced Wednesday morning at Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque.
A television and print literary critic, Gilmour won for his sixth novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. During his acceptance speech, Gilmour joked that he’d made enough enemies over the years that the list of people who would be unhappy he won the award was much longer than the list of people who would be happy about it.
But winners from other regions were much more positive about what the GGs meant to them and to the places they write from and about. Anne Compton, the PEI native who won the poetry award for Processional, said her win was another recognition of the “remarkable literary production of the region’s novelists, poets, and storytellers,” which has been flourishing since the 1990s.
Pamela Porter, the winner for children’s literature – text, said her book The Crazy Man, which takes place in Saskatchewan, was conceived as a celebration of the people, the problems, and the “big blue sky” of the heart of Canada.
John Vaillant, who won the non-fiction prize for The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed, drew gasps from the crowd when he pointed out that his book was the first story about British Columbia to win a GG since Emily Carr won for Klee Wyck in 1941. Other books about B.C. have been shortlisted but, as for wins, “It’s been quite a dry spell,” he said. “British Columbia seems to be an awfully long way from Ottawa and Montreal, but it is very good to be on the wide side of the Rockies.”
The winner of the French fiction prize came from even further away, however. Aki Shimazaki, a native of Japan who learned English before she learned French, won for Hotaru, the fifth book in a series set partly in Japan. Shimazaki and Alberta native Nancy Huston are the only two non-native French-speakers to win the top French fiction prize in the history of the GGs. “I started to learn French when I started writing my books,” Shimazaki said in accented French as she thanked her publisher, her readers, and her friends who had helped her perfect her French.
The awards announcements were made in Montreal this year as part of UNESCO’s Montreal World Book Capital celebration. The GG winners will return to the Grande Bibliothèque tonight to read from their works at an event organized by the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival and the Canada Council. Next week, Governor General Michaëlle Jean will honour them at two events at Rideau Hall, a morning reception for the children’s literature winners (to which schoolchildren are invited) and a gala evening dinner.
Here is the full list of English winners:
• Fiction: David Gilmour’s A Perfect Night to Go to China (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Non-fiction: John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed (Knopf Canada)
• Poetry: Anne Compton’s Processional (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• Drama: John Mighton’s Half Life (Playwrights Canada Press)
• Children’s Literature – Text: Pamela Porter’s The Crazy Man (Groundwood Books)
• Children’s Literature – Illustration: Rob Gonsalves’s Imagine a Day (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster Canada), text by Sarah L. Thomson
• Translation – French to English: Fred A. Reed for Truth or Death: The Quest for Immortality in the Western Narrative Tradition (Talonbooks), a translation of Raconter et mourir: aux sources narratives de l’imaginaire occidental by Thierry Hentsch (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal)
Nov. 9, 2005: The Time in Between, a novel inspired by a 1996 family trip to Vietnam, earned Winnipeg writer David Bergen his first Scotiabank Giller Prize on Tuesday night in Toronto, where he collected a $40,000 cheque and, along with his publisher, McClelland & Stewart, looked forward to the boost in sales and recognition that typically accompanies the honour.
Speaking to a group of reporters after the ceremony, Bergen explained what the victory meant to him. ‘Obviously, it means more sales, it means that it’s noticed, it’s recognized. And a writer ultimately wants that, but that’s not why you write,” he said. ‘I write because I have to and I love it.”
For her part, an ‘over-the-moon” Seligman said that M&S sales staff was ordering another reprint of The Time in Between later Tuesday night, on top of the one that had just arrived from the printers earlier this week. Seligman thinks the Giller victory will also boost Bergen’s profile outside Canada. ‘I think it’s also going to have a huge effect on the U.S. publication, which is just about to happen and also there are a number of international deals that are in the works that I think this will tip over the edge,” she said. Random House U.S. is slated to publish the book, which features an American man who fought in the Vietnam War as the main character, on Dec. 6.
As part of the newly expanded purse, each of the four runners-up – Joan Barfoot for Luck (Knopf Canada), Lisa Moore for Alligator (House of Anansi Press), Edeet Ravel for A Wall of Light (Random House Canada), and Camilla Gibb for Sweetness in the Belly (Doubleday Canada) – went home with $2,500.
Author Warren Cariou, who sat on the jury with Elizabeth Hay and former Giller winner Richard B. Wright, said Tuesday morning’s meeting to choose the winner took about an hour and a half. ‘There’s always a lot of give and take in the initial discussion, but we’re all really happy with the choice.” Between the announcement of the shortlist and Tuesday, Cariou said he re-read each novel, which had an impact on his decision-making. ‘Some books reward re-reading more than others, but I think with some books you really start to get a deeper sense of what the author is doing,” he said. ‘In some of the books, you really got more [the second time through] and you had the sense that these are the books that are going to last.”
Atlantic Book Award Winners
On May 5, 2005 the sixth annual Atlantic Book Awards were handed out.
The winners are:
• Atlantic Poetry Prize ($1,000)
David Helwig, The Year One (Gaspereau Press)
• Best Atlantic Published Book ($4,000 to publisher, $1,000 to author)
Mora Dianne O’Neill, Paintings of Nova Scotia (Nimbus Publishing)
• Booksellers’ Choice Award ($1,000)
Alistair MacLeod and Peter Rankin, illus., To Every Thing There Is a Season (McClelland & Stewart)
• Ann Connor Brimer Children’s Literature Prize ($1,000)
Alice Walsh, Pomiuk, Prince of the North (Beach Holme)
• Dartmouth Book Award – Fiction/Margaret & John Savage First Book Award ($1,500)
Jonathan Campbell, Tarcadia, (Gaspereau Press)
• Dartmouth Book Award – Non-fiction ($1,500)
Paul Erickson, Historic North End Halifax (Nimbus)
• Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Book Illustration ($1,500)
Frances Wolfe, One Wish (Tundra Books)
• Mayor’s Award for Cultural Achievement in Literature ($1,500)
Frances Wolfe, One Wish (Tundra Books)
• Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize ($10,000)
Edward Riche, The Nine Planets (Viking Canada)
• Evelyn Richardson Non-fiction Prize ($1,000)
Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, A Dune Adrift (McClelland & Stewart)
Also, congratulations to local author Arthur Motyer, for being shortlisted for the 2004 First Novel Award which is co-sponsored by Amazon.ca and Books in Canada. The winner, who will be announced later this year, will receive $7,500.
And the nominees are:
• Sunday Afternoon by David Elias (Coteau Books)
• Skinny by Ibi Kaslik (HarperCollins)
• Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam (Raincoast Books)
• What’s Remembered by Arthur Motyer (Cormorant Books)
• Bishop’s Road by Catherine Safer (Killick Press)
