Shani Mootoo, Joseph Dandurand among Writers' Trust literary prize winners
$270,000 was given out across seven prizes, recognizing fiction, nonfiction and poetry
Ontario writer and artist Shani Mootoo and Kwantlen First Nation writer Joseph Dandurand were among the honorees at the 2022 Writers' Trust of Canada Awards, an annual event that recognizes the country's best writers and books of the year.
The Writers' Trust of Canada gave out seven prizes totalling $270,000 in recognition of the year's best in fiction, nonfiction and short story, as well as mid-career and lifetime achievement awards.
Mootoo and Dandurand were both among the lifetime achievement award recipients. Mootoo received the $25,000 Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award for mid-career writers and Dandurand was recognized for his poetry with the $25,000 Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize.
For the first time since 2019, the awards were given out in an in-person ceremony in Toronto on Nov. 2, 2022 and were hosted by CBC Radio's Gill Deacon. The 2020 and 2021 awards were virtually presented during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The organization, founded in 1976 by Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson, Margaret Laurence and David Young, supports Canadian writers through literary awards, fellowships, financial grants, mentorships and more.
Nicholas Herring, Dan Werb take home top book prizes
P.E.I. writer and carpenter Nicholas Herring won the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, a $60,000 award, for his novel Some Hellish.
Some Hellish is about a lobster fisher named Herring who is facing the existential dread of what he feels is a boring, mundane life. That is, until one December day when he decides to cut a hole in the living room floor and alter the course of his life as he knows it. Through a myriad of absurd and confronting experiences, including his wife and children leaving him, Tibetan monks rescuing him after a near-death experience, Herring is forced to reckon with himself, his fear and what it means to be alive.
"Lobster fishing, on P.E.I., anyway, is this incredible industry. It's a ton of work. Your days are long, you're up early. It's very dangerous," said Helling in an interview on The Next Chapter.
"I wanted to write something that was entertaining; something that was beautiful and truthful and difficult. I really wanted to write something that was kind of like life — as I see it at this moment in time."
The Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize jury praised Herring for his "droll and philosophical, ribald and poetic" novel.
"The age-old story of humans versus nature finds a fresh cadence as Herring trawls the seas for body and soul. There is a dark beauty within this story, and it will make the reader's heart sing," said jury members David Bergen, Norma Dunning and Andrew Forbes.
Some Hellish is Herring's debut novel. His writing has also appeared in the Puritan and the Fiddlehead.
The four remaining Atwood Gibson Prize finalists will each receive $5,000. They are Kevin Lambert for Querelle of Roberval, Saeed Teebi for Her First Palestinian, Darcy Tamayose for Ezra's Ghosts and Rima Elkouri for Manam.
Last year's winner was Katherena Vermette for her novel The Strangers.
LISTEN | Nicholas Herring discusses Some Hellish:
Journalist and epidemiologist Dan Werb won the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction for his book The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure.
The Invisible Siege traces the history of the virus family and the scientists who went to war with it, as well as the lessons learned and lost during the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Werb argues there is no doubt coronaviruses will strike again, and that understanding them is the best way to be prepared.
Werb is an epidemiologist, policy analyst and writer currently based in Toronto. He is also the author of the nonfiction work City of Omens.
"If we want this pandemic to end — and really end, not to be something that we seasonally dealing with — we need to make sure that the kinds of protections that we as Canadians are enjoying are exported across the world," said Werb in an interview with The Sunday Magazine.
"Humans have a collective action problem. We all know that, we see it all the time. When you're trying to muster up a collective action for a threat that has not yet presented itself, it's almost impossible."
The Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize jury described Werb's memoir as a "scientific detective story."
"The COVID-19 pandemic has been the most disruptive event in world history since the Second World War," said the jury, comprised of Mark Bourrie, Cheryl Foggo and Jessica McDiarmid.
"Dan Werb tells us how we got here through an authoritative, scientific explanation of coronaviruses. The Invisible Siege is a scientific detective story that leaves the reader frightened that the villain is still on the loose, and maybe in the house."
The four remaining finalists of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction will each receive $5,000. They are Joshua Whitehead for Making Love with the Land, Geoff Dembicki for The Petroleum Papers, Debra Thompson for The Long Road Home and Tara McGowan-Ross for Nothing Will Be Different.
Last year's winner was Tomson Highway for his memoir Permanent Astonishment.
LISTEN | Dan Werb discusses The Invisible Siege:
francesca ekwuyasi wins prize for emerging Canadian LGBTQ+ writers
Halifax author francesca ekwuyasi was awarded the $10,000 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers for debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread. The $10,000 award is presented to an emerging Canadian writer who identifies as (but is not limited to) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or two-spirit for an outstanding debut book in any genre.
This year marks the first year that the Dayne Ogilvie Prize has been awarded at the Writers' Trust annual fall awards gala rather than a standalone announcement in the spring.
Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery.
Butter Honey Pig Bread was longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Roger Mooking championed Butter Honey Pig Bread on Canada Reads 2021.
ekwuyasi is a writer, artist and filmmaker. She was born in Lagos and is currently based in Halifax. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness and belonging.
"This work is filled with many pleasures, by turns sensuous and sensual, magical and mystical, but also deadly serious in its exploration of harm and reconciliation," said the jury, comprised of Billy-Ray Belcourt, Samra Habib and Zoey Leigh Peterson.
"A profound work of love, Butter Honey Pig Bread reminds us that the best novels can hold what cannot be contained."
The two remaining finalists of the Dayne Ogilvie Prize will each receive $1,000. They are Bilal Baig for Acha Bacha and Matthew James Weigel for Whitemud Walking.
Shani Mootoo wins mid-career fiction award for "incandescent fiction"
Mootoo took home the $25,000 Writers' Trust Engel Findley Award, which recognizes the accomplishments of a fiction writer in the middle of her career.
Mootoo's most recent book is Cane | Fire, a poetic memoir which travels between past and present as the narrator moves from Ireland to San Fernando, and eventually to Canada. Through deeply personal poems and artwork, Shani Mootoo reimagines life.
Mootoo is a writer and visual artist who currently lives in Ontario. Her debut novel was 1997's Cereus Blooms at Night. Her novel Polar Vortex was shortlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her other books include the novels Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab and Valmiki's Daughter.
In a 2020 interview with CBC Books, Mootoo revealed that a compulsion to create is what has fuelled her career thus far.
"I've been an artist forever. That impulse to make — and mostly to question, to want to know what and why — propels me," she said.
"It's just that pull towards the word. A long time ago, my distant uncle, V.S. Naipaul, had encouraged me to not write about 'back home' and to write where I am, and write about something I don't know."
"For three decades, Shani Mootoo has been writing some of this country's most original and incandescent fiction," said the jury, comprised of Carol Bruneau and Sean Michaels.
"[Her novels] peel back the layers of emotion experienced by those who resist cultural, racial and sexual hegemony: people whose identities and upbringings are at perilous odds with their desires."
Joseph Dandurand wins mid-career poetry prize for his "streetwise" poetry
Dandurand received the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize, a $25,000 award given to a mid-career poet in anticipation of his future contributions to Canadian poetry.
The Kwantlen First Nation writer was chosen for his ability to blend the "streetwise with the oracular," according to the jury, comprised of Weyman Chan, Luke Hathaway and January Rogers.
"Joseph Dandurand's oeuvre is a marvel of witness, expressing tough, unflinching truths," said the jury.
Dandurand is a poet from the Kwantlen First Nation. His poetry book The East Side of It All was a Canadian finalist for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. His other poetry collections include The Rumour, SH:LAM (The Doctor) and I Will Be Corrupted.
WATCH | Joseph Dandurand shares his poetry:
Candace Savage honoured for nonfiction writing career
Candace Savage received the $25,000 Matt Cohen Award, which honours a lifetime of distinguished work.
Savage is the Sask.-based author of several books including Strangers in the House and the picture book Hello, Crow! Her work A Geography of Blood won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
"Candace Savage is the author of more than 20 books that define and extol the Prairie experience," wrote the selection committee comprised of Patsy Aldana, Michelle Good, Wayne Grady and Olive Senior.
Savage's 2020 book Strangers in the House is a researched look and historical account of the first owner of her Saskatchewan home. The first occupant was Napoléon Sureau dit Blondin, who built the home in the 1920s — a man who hid his French identity and Anglicized his family in order to fit in and be safe.
"Her subjects range from individual studies of crows, ravens, grizzly bears and bees to the disconnecting impact of cultural migration. Savage has been lauded for her works of nonfiction and for her children's writing, and she was described by The Globe and Mail as 'an essential Canadian voice.'"
Elise Gravel wins lifetime achievement award in children's literature
Elise Gravel was awarded the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, a $25,000 prize, in recognition of her lifetime achievement in children's literature.
Gravel is a Quebec author and illustrator who has both written and illustrated dozens of books for children including The Bat, The Worst Book Ever, The Mushroom Fan Club, I Want a Monster!, What Is a Refugee?, Arlo & Pips and Puppy in My Head.
Her most recent book is Killer Underwear Invasion!, a middle-grade nonfiction book that helps young readers learn media literacy skills. The book uses colourful and humorous illustrations to help children understand what fake news is, why people spread it, and how to tell what is true and what isn't.
"Bottomless wit, an inimitable style, and a strong lacing of social commentary are just some of the elements that impressed us about Gravel's extraordinary body of work," said the jury, comprised of Hadley Dyer, Marthe Jocelyn and Mahtab Narsimhan.
"[She] brilliantly introduces difficult topics in an accessible and engaging manner, with subversive humour that thrills readers of every age."
