Dionne Brand, David Chariandy, Lee Maracle shortlisted for $10K Toronto Book Award
Two novels, two essay collections and a short fiction collection have been named finalists for the 2018 Toronto Book Award. The $10,000 prize annually celebrates literature that is evocative of Ontario's capital city.
The finalists are:
- The Unpublished City edited by Dionne Brand
- Brother by David Chariandy
- That Time I Loved You by Carrianne Leung
- My Conversations With Canadians by Lee Maracle
- Floating City by Kerri Sakamoto
Brother by Chariandy and Floating City by Sakamoto are the two novels on the shortlist. Chariandy's book tells the story of a tragic police shooting that shapes the lives of two Scarborough, Ont. brothers. It won the 2017 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Sakamoto's novel is about an ambitious Japanese-Canadian man named Frankie Hanesaka, who follows his architectural dreams to Toronto after enduring Second World War internment camps in western Canada.
The Unpublished City is an anthology of 18 writers edited by Brand. The book collects essays from up-and-coming Toronto writers and centres on their lives in the city.
My Conversations With Canadians collects the questions — on reconciliation, identity and Canada — that Indigenous writer Maracle has been asked throughout her career. She thinks through each of the questions in essays that reflect on her identity as a First Nations leader, Canadian, mother and grandmother.
That Time I Loved You is a powerful collection of interlinked stories by Carrianne Leung. It follows the inner lives of residents in a Scarborough, Ont. suburb as they come to terms with a series of suicides in their community.
The winner of the Toronto Book Award will receive $10,000, while the finalists will each receive $1,000. The winner will be announced on Oct. 10, 2018 at an event hosted by CBC Radio's Gill Deacon in Toronto.
The panel of judges includes Nathan Adler, Susan G. Cole, Kevin Hardcastle, Soraya Peerbaye and Itah Sadu.