Yesterday in Toronto, the Writers’ Trust of Canada recognized the country’s best books and authors with the distribution of seven annually-given prizes.
For his second novel, Batshit Seven, the novelist Sheung-King received the highly coveted Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction prize. The $60,000 award recognizes the year’s best novel or story collection. Following a “lackluster, hungover ESL teacher” who observes a conflict-torn Hong Kong, Batshit Seven taps into a collective Millennial anhedonia, familiar to all subjects of empire.
On the nonfiction end, jurors recognized the essayist Martha Baillie with the $75,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award. Baillie’s award-winning memoir, There is No Blue, is an elegiac collection of three pieces on loss.
The third book prize presented was the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for 2SLGBTQ+ emerging writers. Anthony Oliveira, a Toronto-based author and critic, took home $12,000 for Dayspring, a “bold reimagining of biblical tales that weaves together stories of passion, grief and destruction.”
The four finalists for the Atwood Gibson will also each receive $5,000, because Canada stays so nice.
Recognized books and authors include Éric Chacour, for his heartbreaking Egypt-set 1960s epic, What I Know About You, translated by Pablo Strauss; Conor Kerr for his mis-adventurous tale of bison run amok, Prairie Edge; Canisia Lubrin for her genre-bending debut collection, Code Noir, and Fawn Parker for Hi, It’s Me—a provocative look at grief.
In addition to book-specific prizes, four other authors won career awards. For a lifetime of distinguished work in several disciplines, the multidisciplinary writer/producer Marie Clements received the $40,000 Matt Cohen Award.
Author Madeleine Thien took home the $25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, given to mid-career fiction writers.
Rita Wong received the $60,000 Latner Griffin Award, given to a mid-career Canadian poet.
And Sara O’Leary was awarded the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, a $25,000 prize.
Congratulations to all the winners! Now, go read some Canadian literature!
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