NMA winners crowd shortlists for BC Book Prizes
The shortlists for the 29th annual BC Book Prizes were announced today, with five finalists in each category for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s book, illustrated children’s book, and best BC book.
Carol Shaben, whose non-fiction book about Canada’s bush pilot industry (Into the Abyss) was partly based on her investigative article published in The Walrus that won two National Magazine Awards, is one of the finalists for non-fiction.
National Magazine Award-winning poets Evelyn Lau (A Grain of Rice) and Patricia Young (Night-Eater) are both nominated in the poetry category.
Anne Fleming (Gay Dwarves of America) and Bill Gaston (The World) are former NMA winners nominated for their works of fiction.
Read the complete shortlists for the BC Book Prizes here. The winners will be announced at the 29th annual Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala on Saturday, May 4, 2013, at Government House in Victoria, BC.
Visit the NMA Archives to read the award-winning stories by these and other great writers.
UPPERCASE Magazine raising donations for typewriter book
If you haven’t ever picked up a copy of UPPERCASE magazine, there’s never been a better time. The Calgary-based quarterly periodical of creative arts won the National Magazine Award for Art Direction for its inaugural issue in 2009, and has been a finalist in that category three years running.
Billed as a magazine “for the creative and curious” in the spirit of DIY, UPPERCASE has devoted issues and articles to the creative and innovative side of such crafts as graphic design, letterpress printing, home decor, culinary arts, miniature dollhouses, set decoration, book binding, wardrobe accessories and more.
Under the direction of publisher/editor/designer Janine Vangool, UPPERCASE has also published a collection of books, and its newest project, for which it is raising funds through reader donations, is The Typewriter: A Graphic History of the Beloved Machine.
What will become a richly illustrated book of typewriter memorabilia is being produced with the financial support of readers. The magazine hopes to raise $25,000 to cover the printing costs of 3000 copies of the book, which will launch on June 23 — International Typewriter Day.
Donations of $45 and higher secure a copy of the book when it is published. Larger amounts yield other rewards, including prints of typewriter art and memorabilia, vintage typewriter artifacts, lifetime subscriptions and (for $5000) your own personal design consultation. More info here.
{ Tip o’ the hat: Canadian Magazines blog }
Writers’ Trust Political Writing Prize Shortlist includes NMA Winners
The Writers’ Trust of Canada has announced the shortlist of finalists for the 2012 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
The shortlist includes work by these former National Magazine Award winners and finalists:
- Marcello Di Cintio for Walls: Travels Along the Barricades
- Taras Grescoe for Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile
- Noah Richler for What We Talk About When We Talk About War
- Jeffrey Simpson for Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century
Peter F. Trent is also nominated for The Merger Delusion: How Swallowing Its Suburbs Made an Even Bigger Mess of Montreal.
Read more about all the finalists and the Writers’ Trust prizes.
The winner of the $25,000 prize will be announced on March 6.
Shortlist for the Charles Taylor Prize includes former NMA finalist
The shortlist for the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction was announced this morning at a ceremony at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto.
This year’s shortlist includes a book by former NMA finalist Ross King, Leonardo and The Last Supper. The shortlist also includes books by Carol Bishop-Gwyn, Tim Cook, Sandra Djwa and Andrew Preston.
Click here for the complete announcement and shortlist. The winner will be announced on March 4, and receives a prize of $25,000. The runners up each receive $2000.
Past winners of the Charles Taylor Prize include National Magazine Award winners Andrew Westoll, Charles Foran, Ian Brown, J.B. MacKinnon and Richard Gywn.
Related Posts:
Great Books for the Holidays, all by NMA Winners
“Monkey Ranch” by Julie Bruck won the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry
While stuffing stockings and gift baskets with magazine subscriptions (Buy 2, Get 1 Free!; don’t forget Maisonneuve, Canada’s magazine of the year) may be your first priority this holiday season, we present our second annual holiday book guide to tempt you with yet more literary treats. (And perhaps our first annual guide may still be of interest.)
All of these books are by National Magazine Award finalists and winners.
Non-Fiction
- Into the Abyss, by Carol Shaben
- A Geography of Blood, by Candace Savage
- The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, by Andrew Westoll
- Eating Dirt, by Charlotte Gill
- What We Talk About When We Talk About War, by Noah Richler
- The Measure of a Man, by JJ Lee
- The Devil’s Curve, by Arno Kopecky
- Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism, by Joel Yanofsky
Fiction
- Dr. Brinkley’s Tower, by Robert Hough
- Everybody has Everything, by Katrina Onstad
- People Park, by Pasha Malla
- Dibidalen, by Seán Virgo
- The Reasonable Ogre, by Mike Barnes
- The Headmaster’s Wager, by Vincent Lam
- My Life Among the Apes, by Cary Fagan
- The Sweet Girl, by Annabel Lyon
Poetry
- Monkey Ranch, by Julie Bruck
- L’il Bastard, by David McGuimpsey
- The New Measures, by A.F. Moritz
- The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane, by Patrick Lane
Illustration
- Virginia Wolf, by Isabelle Arsenault
eBooks
- Blindsided, by Russell Smith
- And They Danced by the Light of the Moon, by Heather O’Neill
- Finding Karla, by Paula Todd
- Noisemakers, by Grace O’Connell
- Summer of the Flesh Eater, by Zsuzsi Gartner
- 1999, by Pasha Malla
- I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth, by Margaret Atwood
Did we miss any 2012 books by NMA winners? Drop a comment or tweet at us.
Related posts:
Booking up for Winter: Great Reads by NMA Winners
National Magazine Awards > Books
Best Canadian Essays 2012 features 7 National Magazine Award winners
The 2012 installment of The Best Canadian Essays has been released from Tightrope Books, edited by Ray Robertson and Christopher Doda.
Like previous editions of the book, The Best Canadian Essays 2012 features a number of National Magazine Award-winning stories by some remarkable authors celebrated at the 35th NMA gala earlier this year, and from previous years:
- Alexandra Molotkow, whose article “My Cybersexual Education” (Toronto Life) was part of a series that won Gold in Editorial Package for 2011;
- Paul Wilson, whose article “Adrift on the Nile” (The Walrus) about the Arab Spring won Gold in One-of-a-Kind;
- Eric Andrew Gee, whose article “Our Tar Sands Man in Washington” (Maisonneuve) won Honourable Mention in Politics & Public Interest;
- Chris Turner, whose article “Paradigm Shift” (Alberta Views) won Honourable Mention in Essays.
The book also features essays by former National Magazine Award winners and finalists Monte Paulsen, Ryan Bigge, and Jeet Heer.
Check out the complete list of essays from the 2012 edition and buy it at Tightrope Books.
NMA winner Geoff Powter to be honoured at Banff Festival
Geoff Powter
This Saturday the 37th annual Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival will open in the heart of Canada’s Rocky Mountain country for nine days of events featuring authors, filmmakers and speakers from around the world.
National Magazine Award-winning writer Geoff Powter–a psychologist and alpinist from Canmore, Alberta–will be formally honoured by the Banff Centre for his long career of mountaineering expeditions, literary achievements and fostering community awareness of environmental issues.
The former longtime editor of the Canadian Alpine Journal and frequent contributor to Explore magazine (where he has won 7 National Magazine Awards) is the author of the 2006 bestseller Strange and Dangerous Dreams: The Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness, a former Banff festival winner.
Read some of Geoff Powter’s National Magazine Award-winning work at the NMA archives (magazine-awards.com/archive).
New book by NMA Winner Carol Shaben looks at the safety of our skies
National Magazine Award-winning writer Carol Shaben, whose debut magazine feature “Fly at Your Own Risk” (The Walrus) was a double NMA winner in Investigative Reporting and Politics & Public Interest in 2009, has published a new book the evolved from that original magazine story.
Into the Abyss: How a Deadly Plane Crash Changed the Lives of a Pilot, a Politician, a Criminal and a Cop (Random House Canada) is in bookstores tomorrow, October 16.
We profiled Carol in our Off the Page interview series last spring, where she talked about how she latched on to the investigation of Canada’s aviation safety regulation and was inspired by the story of a particular plane crash in which her father was one of the survivors. [Read "Off the Page, with Carol Shaben"]
From the publisher, about Into the Abyss:
On an icy night in October 1984, a Piper Navajo commuter plane carrying 9 passengers crashed in the remote wilderness of northern Alberta, killing 6 people. Four survived: the rookie pilot, a prominent politician, a cop, and the criminal he was escorting to face charges.
Despite the poor weather, Erik Vogel, the 24-year-old pilot, was under intense pressure to fly–a situation not uncommon to pilots working for small airlines. Overworked and exhausted, he feared losing his job if he refused to fly. Larry Shaben, the author’s father and Canada’s first Muslim Cabinet Minister, was commuting home after a busy week at the Alberta Legislature.
After Paul Archambault, a drifter wanted on an outstanding warrant, boarded the plane, rookie Constable Scott Deschamps decided, against RCMP regulations, to remove his handcuffs–a decision that profoundly impacted the men’s survival. As they fought through the night to stay alive, the dividing lines of power, wealth and status were erased and each man was forced to confront the precious and limited nature of his existence.
The survivors forged unlikely friendships and through them found strength and courage to rebuild their lives. Into the Abyss is a powerful narrative that combines in-depth reporting with sympathy and grace to explore how a single, tragic event can upset our assumptions and become a catalyst for transformation.
For more on Carol Shaben’s new book, watch this video of Random House Canada vice-president Anne Collins talking about Into the Abyss.
Photos from the Thin Air Winnipeg International Writers Festival
Manitoba Theatre for Young People (photo by Leif Norman)
Wish we could have been in Winnipeg last month for the Thin Air International Writers Festival. Fortunately photographer Leif Norman captured the event with a suite of beautiful photography.
This year’s event, held on September 26 at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, featured National Magazine Award-winning writers Pasha Malla (People Park), Seán Virgo (Dibidalen) and Mike Barnes (The Reasonable Ogre), as well as acclaimed novelists Rawi Hage (Carnival) and Esmé Claire Keith (Not Being on a Boat).
Visit LeifNorman.net to check out all the photos. Check out the National Magazine Awards archive to read stories by these and other great writers.
Authors Pasha Malla and Esmé Claire Keith (photo by Leif Norman)
8 former NMA Winners land on GG Awards shortlists
The shortlists for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Awards–with categories in both English and French for Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Non-fiction, Children’s Text, Children’s Illustration, and Translation–have been announced by Canada Council for the Arts, and eight former National Magazine Award winners have garnered nominations.
In Fiction, former NMA winners Robert Hough (Dr. Brinkley’s Tower) and Vincent Lam (The Headmaster’s Wager) are among the 5 finalists.
In Poetry, two-time National Magazine Award winner Julie Bruck (Monkey Ranch) and former NMA finalists A.F. Moritz (The New Measures) and David McGimpsey (L’il Bastard) made the GG shortlist.
In Non-fiction, two-time NMA winner Noah Richler (What We Talk About When We Talk About War) and former nominee Ross King (Leonardo and the Last Supper) were named GG finalists.
And in Children’s Illustration, former National Magazine Award winner Isabelle Arsenault received a GG nomination for Virginia Wolf.
Check out all the GG Awards finalists.
Visit the National Magazine Awards archive to view the works of these great writers and artists.
The winners of the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Awards will be announced on November 13 at the Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique du Québec in Montreal. His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, will present the winners with their awards, which include a cash prize of $25,000, at a gala at Rideau Hall on November 28.
New book by NMA finalist Arno Kopecky investigates anti-mining activism
Two-time National Magazine Award Honourable-Mention honouree Arno Kopecky has written a book about the impact of mining among indigenous communities in South America.
The Devil’s Curve (Douglas & McIntyre), follows politicians, native communities, mining companies and anti-mining activists through a series of events, protest movements and harrowing experiences that culminated in the deaths of dozens of Peruvian natives in a place called The Devil’s Curve in June 2009.
From D&M’s site:
“Arno Kopecky picks up the story where the news left off. Travelling to Peru and Colombia, he follows radical left-wing politicians on the campaign trail, discusses black magic with villagers, winds up in gunfights and hallucinates in dark huts. Superbly crafted and full of complex and captivating characters, The Devil’s Curve is a story that speaks to universal themes of the dislocation of Aboriginal people, the inequitable distribution of wealth globally and the abdication of responsibility from governments to corporations. Kopecky’s remarkable debut is a haunting tale, brilliantly told, of how affluent Western lifestyles impact distant societies.“
Kopecky has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards for his writing in The Walrus. He’s also been published in The Tyee, Maclean’s and Foreign Policy. This is his first book. You can check out a review of the book in the fall issue of Maisonneuve, Canada’s Magazine of the Year.
NMA Winner Joshua Knelman wins Edna Staebler Prize
National Magazine Award-winning writer Joshua Knelman, whose book Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art began life as a NMA-winning investigative story in The Walrus, has been named the 2012 winner of the prestigious Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction from Wilfried Laurier University in Waterloo.
We profiled Joshua and his remarkable book in our Off the Page interview segment last spring, outlining the story of how his NMA success helped pave the way for the book project.
The Edna Staebler Award was established in 1991 by writer and literary journalist Edna Staebler. It recognizes a Canadian writer of a first or second published book with a Canadian locale and/or significance. The annual winner receives a prize of $10,000.
The Tyee launches event series with America: But Better
The award-winning and National Magazine Award-nominated The Tyee magazine is launching a speaker series called “A Tyee’d Talk” with the first event a book launch of America: But Better.
The authors, Chris Cannon and Brian Calvert, will present their unique interpretation of how to cure the ails of our neighbour to the south at the Wise Hall in Vancouver.
The event is this Thursday, September 27 at 7pm. Ticket info at the BCAMP website.
NMA Winners among 2012 Giller Long List
Yesterday the ScotiaBank Giller jury announced its long list for the 2012 prize, and we’re pleased to see National Magazine Award winners among them.
Katrina Onstad (2009 NMA winner for “The Jesus Show” in Toronto Life; also a 9-time NMA finalist) made the Giller long list for her novel Everybody has Everything (Emlem Editions).
Robert Hough (1999 NMA winner for “Prisoner of Love” in Saturday Night; also a 10-time NMA finalist) is Giller long-listed for his novel Dr. Brinkley’s Tower (House of Anansi).
Also among the Giller hopefuls are former National Magazine Award nominees Cary Fagan (My Life Among the Apes), Will Ferguson (419), and Annabel Lyon (The Sweet Girl).
Check out the entire long list at the Giller website, and add these great Canadian novels to your reading list.
New eBook by NMA winner Russell Smith takes publishing to new frontiers
Novelist, journalist and National Magazine Award-winning writer Russell Smith is the first author to publish an eBook via a new venture of the venerable agency Canadian Writers Group (CWG).
In December CWG announced plans to develop new frontiers for its writers — who between them possess more National Magazine Awards than even we can count — through digital self-publishing of eBooks, long-form journalism articles and story bundles.
Smith’s new book Blindsided, adapted from a Toronto Life personal essay, is being distributed via Kobo for just $1.99 and, within 48 hours of its launch, reached #11 on Kobo’s Top 50 eBooks list.
CWG promises readers at least five more eBooks this spring from its writers and will expand its digital reach to include Kindle and iBook readers as well.
Russell Smith won a National Magazine Award in 1997 for his fiction in The New Quarterly, and has been nominated a total of six times for his work in Toronto Life, Chatelaine, enRoute and Flare.
(Tip ‘o the hat to Canadian Magazines blog.)
NMA Winners among Charles Taylor Prize finalists
The shortlist for the 11th annual Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction was announced yesterday, and of the five great authors in the running for the honour (and the $25,000 cash prize) several are National Magazine Award laureates.
Andrew Westoll, a 2007 winner in the Travel category for a feature article in explore, is nominated for his new book, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary.
Charlotte Gill, shortlisted for her tree-planting memoir Eating Dirt, received an Honourable Mention at the 2007 National Magazine Awards for her writing in Vancouver Review.
Both Gill and Westoll are also in the running for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.
The full list and details of this year’s Charles Taylor finalists can be found here. The winner will be announced March 5.
Best Canadian Essays 2011 features NMA winners
[This post has been updated] For the third year running, Tightrope books has published The Best Canadian Essays, an anthology of great Canadian non-fiction from the past year, edited by Christopher Doda and Ibi Kaslik. And like its two predecessors, the 2011 edition of Best Canadian Essays is chock full of National Magazine Award winners.
Among the seventeen works in this year’s Best Canadian Essays collection is “Lucky Strikes,” a droll meditation on cigarette smoking written by Mark Mann in Maisonneuve, which won a 2010 Gold NMA in the Humour category.
The other 2010 National Magazine Award winner in the book is “The Lizard, the Catacombs and the Clock,” an adventurous essay about the (literal) Parisian underworld by Sean Michaels originally published in the literary journal Brick. The piece took the Gold prize in One of a Kind.
Two other articles in the Best Canadian Essays 2011 book — “The Problem with Women” by Kelly Pullen (Toronto Life) and “The Enemy Inside” by Daniel Baird (The Walrus) — won Honourable Mention at the National Magazine Awards.
National Magazine Award-winning writers Nicholas Hune-Brown (“What the Elephants Know“; Toronto Life) and Mark Kingwell (“Wage Slavery…”) are also featured in the collection.
[Update Dec 23: As brought to our attention by a user comment, Best Canadian Essays 2011 features yet another NMA honouree: Kerry Clare's "Love is a Let-Down" originally published in The New Quarterly received Honourable Mention in the Personal Journalism category. Kerry, sorry we missed you in the first posting. Congratulations!]
NMA winners comprise shortlist for B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction
Yesterday the British Columbia Achievement Foundation announced four finalists for the 2011 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that all four have pocketed National Magazine Awards as well.
National Magazine Award-winning writer Andrew Westoll — who took the top prize in the Travel category in 2007 for an article in explore — made the B.C. shortlist with his new book, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary.
Also among the B.C. Award finalists is Montreal writer Joel Yanofsky, who won a 2008 National Magazine Award in the Personal Journalism category for “Bad Day,” published in the Malahat Review. Yanofsky’s new book is Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism.
Charlotte Gill, whose tree-planting memoir Eating Dirt made the B.C. shortlist, won an Honourable Mention at the 2007 National Magazine Awards for her writing in Vancouver Review. Similarly, B.C. finalist Brian Fawcett (new book Human Happiness) holds a National Magazine Award Honourable Mention from 1978 for his poetry in The Capilano Review.
Congrats to all four who made the shortlist. The coveted B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction includes a cash prize of $40,000. The winner will be announced in February, 2012.
Booking up for Winter: Great reads by NMA Winners
We shudder to employ the phrase ‘Winter Reading List,’ but there’s no denying that the curl-up-under-a-sofa-blanket season is fast approaching. Last month we told you how you might get some free NMA-winning magazine subscriptions for the holidays (Buy 2, Get 1 Free, to be precise). Today we happily promote some new and newish books by NMA-winning writers and artists that just might last you till spring.
These are some of our staff picks in no particular order, but by no means an exhaustive list of books out there by National Magazine Award-winning creators. (Indeed, if you know of a recent book by an NMA winner, please deposit it in a comment or email us.)
Writing Gordon Lightfoot, by Dave Bidini (2009 winner for Columns)
The Jonas Variations, by George Jonas (three-time NMA winner)
Hot Art, by Joshua Knelman (2005 winner for Arts & Entertainment)
Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (A Novel), by Zsuzsi Gartner (2005 winner for Fiction)
The Leap, by Chris Turner (2009 winner in Essays and Personal Journalism)
Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People, by Douglas Coupland, illustrated by Graham Roumieu (4-time NMA winner)
The Free World (A Novel), by David Bezmozgis (2003 winner for Fiction)
The Armageddon Factor, by Marci McDonald (9-time NMA winner)
The Riverbones, by Andrew Westoll (2007 winner for Travel)
The Sheikh’s Batmobile, by Richard Poplak (2009 winner for Sports & Recreation)
The Boy in the Moon, by Ian Brown (12-time NMA winner)
Dead Man in Paradise, by J.B. MacKinnon (9-time NMA winner)
Love in the Time of Cholesterol, by Cecily Ross (2007 winner for How-To)
We Cannot Fail, by Geoff Powter (7-time NMA winner)
NMA Humourist Allan Fotheringham at TIWF
Hall of Famer Canadian journalist Allan Fotheringham, who once defeated himself for a National Magazine Award (he took Gold and Honourable Mention for Humour in 1979), will be reading from his new book, Boy from Nowhere: A Life in Ninety-One Countries (Dundurn Press) at the Thousand Islands Writers Festival this Sunday, November 6, in Brockville, Ontario. (More details here.)
Magazine fans of a certain generation (or two) probably know Allan best for his back-page column that appeared in Maclean’s magazine for 27 years. The acerbic “Dr. Foth,” as he was often known, regularly leaves a trail of witty sobriquets behind him (the Holy Mother Corporation; Jurassic Clark; Coma City).
(Surely his most beloved epigram of Canadian politics is: “In the Maritimes, politics is a disease, in Quebec a religion, in Ontario a business, on the Prairies a protest and in British Columbia, entertainment.”)
So if you’re in the neighbourhood, you won’t want to miss him speak.
NMA winner Joshua Knelman publishes new book on art crime
“That was another stroke of good luck. The NMA attracted the attention of an agent, Samantha Haywood, and that paved the way to a book deal.”
–Joshua Knelman, who won a NMA Gold prize for his article, “Artful Crimes” (The Walrus, November 2005) at the 30th National Magazine Awards, on how his success at the NMAs helped secure a book deal. Knelman’s new book, Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art, was just published last month by Douglas & McIntyre. Read the full text of Knelman’s interview at The Walrus Blog. Find out more about Joshua Knelman’s success at the NMAs over at our Winners Archive.
