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FOR INFORMATION ON THE CURRENT ATLANTIC BOOK FESTIVAL AND AWARDS, PLEASE GO TO: www.writers.ns.ca/
In 1993, WFNS endowed funds ($5000) for a prize to honour the work of Atlantic poets. Led by Deirdre Dwyer, Atlantic Canadian poets gave readings, held bake sales, organized raffles and wrote letters. The overwhelming support of both local and national writers, writing organizations, universities and publishers (special thanks to Harlequin Enterprises) was heartening. WFNS has subsequently worked to increase the endowment to ensure an annual $2000 prize. The inaugural prize was awarded in 1998 to Carmelita McGrath for To the New World. Last year’s winner was Anne Compton for Processional. Previous winners include John Steffler, Ken Babstock, Anne Simpson, M. Travis Lane, Brian Bartlett and David Helwig.
In 1990, the Nova Scotia Library Association established the Ann Connor Brimer Award to recognize writers residing in Atlantic Canada who have made an outstanding contribution to children’s literature. A fierce champion of a Canadian identity made strong through the vitality of its regions and a staunch friend of Canadian children’s literature, Ann Connor Brimer began her teaching career at a time when books written in Canada by Canadians for Canadians were scarce, especially among books for young readers. Ann worked to make it happen, serving as Executive Director of the Canadian Learning Materials Centre and the Atlantic Institute of Education, as Atlantic officer of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and, in 1979, co-founding Woozles, the first bookstore in the Atlantic region devoted entirely to children’s books. The first award of $500 was presented in 1991 to Joyce Barkhouse for Pit Pony. Last year, Kevin Major (who won previously for Eating Between the Lines) received the award for Aunt Olga’s Christmas Postcards. Other winners include Alice Walsh, Don Aker, Lesley Choyce and Sheree Fitch. The Brimer Steering Committee thanks Ann’s family and friends for their continued support, the Nova Scotia and PEI Departments of Culture, as well as the library, writing, publishing, bookselling and education communities. Thanks to all this, Ann’s original bequest of $1,000 has grown more than twenty times. Winners now receive $1,000 and monies raised in Ann’s name now contribute to the promotion of the shortlisted titles throughout the region and to this awards ceremony.
The Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association’s award for Best Atlantic Published Book recognizes publishing companies and their hardworking professionals who bring out new books each season. Each year a publisher whose book possesses the best balance of content, presentation, quality of design and production, as well as contributing the most to an understanding of Atlantic Canada, receives the award. Last year it was Breakwater Books and Reginald Shepherd & Helen Parson Shepherd: A Life Composed, edited by Ronald Rompkey. The prizes for Best Atlantic Published Book have been generously donated for the fourth year by Friesen’s Corporation (first prize) and Hignell Book Printing. The first prize ($4000) goes to the winning publishing firm and a $1000 goes to the author. The other two finalists shortlisted for the award receive $1000 in printing credit and $250 for the authors. The awards wouldn’t be complete without the voice of booksellers and readers who, each year since 1989, celebrate the book that flew off shelves and connected to this region. Last year Donna Morrissey’s Sylvanus Now took the prize. Past winners have been Alistair MacLeod for No Great Mischief and To Everything There is a Season, Harry Bruce for Down Home, Sheree Fitch for Sleeping Dragons All Around, Harry Thurston for Tidal Life, Silver Donald Cameron for Wind, Whales and Whiskey, John DeMont for Citizen Irving, Michael Harris for Rare Ambition, David Adams Richards for To Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. Also in 1989, the Dartmouth Book and Writing Awards were created by the city’s then-mayor, Dr. John P. Savage. The prize honours the best Canadian literature featuring Nova Scotia and its people, recognizing the valuable contributions writers make to our cultural heritage. Since 1990, awards have gone to both fiction and non-fiction ($1500 each). The Dartmouth Book Award for fiction is sponsored by Jarislowsky-Fraser Ltd. and the non-fiction award is sponsored by Seamark Asset Management Ltd.
THE MAYOR'S AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN BOOK ILLUSTRATION Established in 2003, this annual $1500 prize recognizes the best in book illustration by an illustrator, artist or photographer who is a resident of the Halifax Regional Municipality. Illustrated books that have been published originally in the past calendar year and are at least 24 pages long are eligible for consideration. Winners to date include Paul Nicholson, Susan Tooke and Frances Wolfe. LILLIAN SHEPHERD MEMORIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN ILLUSTRATION The book business needs stalwart characters and Lillian Shepherd, a long-time buyer for The Book Room and life-long lover of books, who died suddenly in 1997, was one. In 2002, Lillian’s legion of friends and colleagues from Halifax, Lunenburg and Bermuda created the Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award to applaud the book that combines Lillian’s love for illustrated children’s books and her affinity for locally produced work. The $500 prize is funded by The Book Room in Halifax and the Atlantic area publishers’ representatives. In 2003, the inaugural award was given to Susan Tooke for Full Moon Rising. Subsequent winners are Geoff Butler for Ode to Newfoundland and Peter Rankin for Making Room. Last year, Jeffrey C. Domm won for Atlantic Puffin: Little Brother of the North. Customers and authors visiting The Book Room were always put at ease by her ready smile and laughter, but her love of life shone through most clearly when she spoke of her husband Frank and their two daughters, Lynn and Cynthia. This prize reminds us all of those moments in Lillian’s presence.
The Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award was established by WFNS and the Writers’ Development Trust (now the Writers’ Trust of Canada) in 1990. Thanks to the continued support and the enormous generosity of the Raddall family, this major award now gives $10,000 to the winning author. The award recognizes the best work of fiction written by a native or resident Atlantic Canadian published in the previous calendar year. Last year, Donna Morrissey won for her novel Sylvanus Now. The first award of $1000 was made in 1991 to Wayne Johnston for The Divine Ryans. Subsequent awards have gone to Herb Curtis, John Steffler, David Adams Richards, Bernice Morgan, M. T. Dohaney, Alfred Silver and Shree Ghatage, among others. Born in Hythe, England in 1903, Thomas Head Raddall moved to Halifax with his family in 1913. When his father was killed at Amiens in 1918, he began to support himself – Mrs. Raddall’s small army pension did not provide for children over fifteen. He went to the Canadian School of Telegraphy, spent two years at sea and then was posted to Sable Island, where he absorbed the background for The Nymph and the Lamp. The scarcity of jobs eventually obliged him to accept a backwoods post at a pulp and paper company in Milton. In his spare time, he explored his surroundings, becoming a woodsman and making friends with local Mi’kmaq guides. Raddall married Edith Freeman in 1927. Their first year together was a difficult one: troubles in the wood-pulp market meant a 20% decrease in pay, Edith’s brother was drowned, and their first child was stillborn. In 1938, after selling stories to magazines like Maclean’s and Blackwood’s and writing two novels, he left his job to write full time. Raddall’s work came to the notice of other historical writers and, with the encouragement of editor Thomas B. Costain, he undertook to write His Majesty’s Yankees. Raddall’s literary reputation grew; he won Governor General’s Awards for The Path of Destiny, Halifax - Warden of the North and The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek, and several of his works were adapted for radio and television. He received honourary degrees from King’s College, Dalhousie, St. Mary’s and St. Francis Xavier Universities, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
The Evelyn Richardson Prize was established by WFNS in 1977, shortly after Richardson’s death, to honour the best published non-fiction written by a native or resident Nova Scotian. Last year, Linda Johns received this prize for Birds of a Feather: Tales of a Wild Bird Haven, while previous winners include Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, Harry Bruce, Alden Nowlan, Joan and Lewis Payzant, Kay Hill, Bruce Armstrong, J. Murray Beck, Brian C. Cuthbertson, Lilias M. Toward, P. B. Waite, Tony Foster, Harold Horwood, Dean Jobb, Judith Fingard, Robert Pope, Sally Ross and many more. Born in Shelburne County in 1902, Evelyn Richardson is probably best known for her Governor General’s Award-winning book We Keep a Light (McGraw Hill Ryerson, 1945). It is an autobiographical account of the years she and her husband spent on Bon Portage Island, where he was the lightkeeper. There they raised their son and two daughters while developing an ever increasing self-sufficiency on their privately owned portion of the island. We Keep a Light is a kind of Nova Scotian Swiss Family Robinson — the wild nature of the elements providing the warmth, and the determination and ingenuity of Evelyn and Morrill Richardson providing the continuity. Added responsibilities, deprivations and excitement during the Battle of the Atlantic make the account of the Richardsons’ life on Bon Portage even more remarkable. Evelyn Richardson proved that publishers’ rejections, with that hateful phrase “of local interest only,” could be overcome. One of her great accomplishments was to familiarize her national and international readers with her much loved corner of Nova Scotia. MARGARET AND JOHN SAVAGE FIRST BOOK AWARD The Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, presented for the first time in 2003 with a value of $1500, recognizes the best first book of fiction or non-fiction published in the previous year by an Atlantic writer. Margaret and John Savage were instrumental in establishing the Dartmouth Book and Writing Awards in 1989. As the then-mayor of Dartmouth, John Savage arranged the funding of the initial fiction and non-fiction awards. Margaret not only assisted in the arrangements of the awards, but also served the patrons of the Alderney Gate Public Library community as a volunteer. Dartmouth and the larger municipal and provincial communities have benefitted enormously from the support for writers, books, reading and cultural pursuits in general that have been synonymous with the lives of Margaret and John. Naming the “First Book Award” in their honour is a small but significant tribute to their contributions. The award has been presented to Jonathan Campbell for Tarcadia, Dan Falk for Universe on a T-Shirt, Beth Ryan for What is Invisible and to Tom Gallant for Hard Chance: Sailing into the Heart of Love. In 2004 the John and Margaret Savage Humanities Endowment was created to fund projects supported by Margaret and John. The endowment funds the Music and Medicine Program at the Dalhousie Medical School, the John Savage Medical Clinic in Niger and the First Book Award. |
