FOR INFORMATION ON THE CURRENT ATLANTIC BOOK FESTIVAL AND AWARDS, PLEASE GO TO: www.writers.ns.ca/
Winners of the 2007
Atlantic Book Awards
Click HERE
for details of the Awards Ceremony
Atlantic Poetry Prize
- Steve McOrmond, Primer
on the Hereafter (Wolsak & Wynn)
Best Atlantic Published Book - Bruno
Bobak: The Full Palette, edited by Bernard Riordon, Goose
Lane Editions
Booksellers’ Choice Award - Ami
McKay, The Birth House (Knopf)
Ann Connor Brimer Children’s Literature
Prize - Budge Wilson,
Friendships (Penguin)
Dartmouth Book Award - Fiction - Linda
Little, Scotch River (Penguin)
Dartmouth Book Award - Non-fiction - Keith
McLaren, A Race for Real Sailors (Douglas & McIntyre)
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize -
Linda Little, Scotch River
(Penguin)
Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction - Linden
MacIntyre, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence (HarperCollins)
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award -
John G. Langley, Steam Lion:
A Biography of Samuel Cunard (Nimbus)
Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Illustration
- Brenda Jones, Skunks for
Breakfast, Nimbus (Lesley Choyce, author)
 Mayor's
Award for Excellence in Book Illustration*
- Jeffrey
C. Domm, Formac's Pocketguide to Fossils
 Mayor's
Award for Cultural Achievement in Literature - Sandra
McIntyre, Managing Editor - Nimbus Publishing
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THE CEREMONY:
The nominees for the eighth annual Atlantic Book Awards
traipsed across over 30,000 kilometers in one week, participating in
a record number of Book Festival events – readings, signings and
workshops across all Four Atlantic Provinces – before landing
at Pier 21 in Halifax. The auditorium hummed in anticipation
and the book tables in the lobby could hardly contain their cargo of
shortlisted books. Ten different book prizes were awarded plus the Mayor’s
Awards for Illustration and for Cultural Achievement in Literature.
Animated CBC-Radio One host Costas Halavrezos
opened the Ceremony and presided over the proceedings with gusto. Mayor
Peter Kelly took to the stage and got the presentations rolling
by awarding the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Book Illustration
to Jeffrey Domm for his colourful illustrations in
Formac’s Pocketguide to Fossils. The crowd’s applause
resounded as he then presented the Mayor’s Award for Cultural
Achievement in Literature to an astonished Sandra McInytre,
Managing Editor for Nimbus Publishing. Sandra has been movin’
and shakin’ Atlantic publishing with her vibrance and sparkling
vision since she first joined Nimbus in 2000.
Beloved Nova Scotia writer Budge Wilson,
who’s currently at work on the sequel to Anne of Green Gables,
received the Ann Connor Brimer Children’s Literature Prize
for her enchanting collection of stories, Friendships (Penguin).
Among countless other awards, Budge also won the 1994 Brimer Award for
Oliver’s War. Also nominated for this year’s Prize were
Janet McNaughton for The Raintree Rebellion (HarperCollins)
and Darlene Ryan for Saving Grace (Orca).
Linda Little won big for her tale of
bull rider Cass Hutt and his journey home to Nova Scotia, Scotch
River (Penguin). She received the Dartmouth Book Award
for Fiction and later made a second trek to the stage as Budge
Wilson changed sides of the podium to present Linda with this year’s
$10,000 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize.
The Award’s patron, Tom Raddall II and his son, Tom Raddall III,
were also in attendance. The other nominees for the Dartmouth Book Award
for Fiction were Maureen Hull for The View from A Kite (Vagrant)
and Stephen Kimber for Reparations (HarperCollins). Ami McKay’s
The Birth House (Knopf) and Wayne Johnston’s The
Custodian of Paradise (Knopf) had also been shortlisted for the
Raddall Prize.
The Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Illustration
was presented to Brenda Jones for her delightful depiction
of Lesley Choyce’s story of a father and daughter’s struggle
with some odoriferous guests, Skunks for Breakfast (Nimbus).
Also shortlisted were illustrators Odell Archibald for P is for
Puffin (Sleeping Bear) and Ron Lightburn for The Happily Ever
Afternoon (Annick).
Administered by the Writers’ Federation of Nova
Scotia, the Atlantic Poetry Prize celebrated ten years
of winning verse, awarding this year’s $2000 Prize to Steve
McOrmond for his moving collection, Primer on the Hereafter.
Peter Sanger’s Aiken Drum (Gaspereau) and Mary Dalton’s
Red Ledger (Véhicule) were also nominated for the Prize.
The longest-running writing award in Atlantic Canada,
the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction, turned
thirty this year and was awarded to Linden MacIntyre
for his charming memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence
(HarperCollins). The other shortlisted titles were Marq de Villier’s
Windswept (McClelland & Stewart) and Natalie MacLean's
Red, White and Drunk All Over (Doubleday).
Trudy Carey, President of the Atlantic Independent Booksellers
Association, presented the Booksellers’ Choice Award
to Ami McKay for The Birth House (Knopf),
the debut novel that astounded booksellers when it instantly flew to
the top of bestseller lists across the country – and stayed there.
The Custodian of Paradise (Knopf) by Wayne Johnston and The
Friends of Meager Fortune (Doubleday) by David Adams Richards were
also shortlisted for the Award.
Ferryboat Captain Keith McLaren flew
over 6000 km from his post as Master of The Spirit of Vancouver Island
to accept the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction
for A Race for Real Sailors (Douglas & McIntyre), his spirited
account of the International Fisherman’s Cup races from 1920 to
1938. Keith had gone to Navy school as a young man in the very building,
Pier 21, where he received this award. The other nominees were Linden
MacIntyre for Causeway: A Passage from Innocence (HarperCollins)
and M. Brook Taylor for A Camera on the Banks (Goose Lane).
John G. Langley was away at sea (appropriately
enough), but his sons, Adam and Andrew, were on hand to accept the Margaret
and John Savage First Book Award on his behalf for Steam
Lion: A Biography of Samuel Cunard (Nimbus). The Award was presented
by Mike Savage, M.P. and other members of the Savage family. Also nominated
were Elaine McCluskey for The Watermelon Social (Gaspereau)
and M. Brook Taylor for A Camera on the Banks (Goose Lane).
Presented by Carolyn Wood of the Association of Canadian
Publishers, this year’s Best Atlantic Published Book Award
went to Fredericton’s Goose Lane Editions and editor Bernard Riordon
for their stunning portrayal of one of Atlantic Canada’s most
captivating artists, Bruno Bobak: The Full Palette.
Susanne Alexander of Goose Lane Editions accepted the Award. Administered
by the Atlantic Publishers' Marketing Association, the winner's prize,
which is sponsored by Friesens Corp., presents the publisher with $4,000
and the writer or editor with $1,000. The runners-up – Nimbus
for East Coast Rug-Hooking Designs by Deanne Fitzpatrick and Goose Lane
for Ganong by David Folster – were presented with $1,000 printing
credits for each publisher and $250 for each author, by Hignell Book
Printing.
The Atlantic Book Awards are presented by the Steering
Committee of the Atlantic Book Festival, which is made up of representatives
from the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Association, Atlantic Publishers
Marketing Association, Atlantic Area Publishers' Representatives, Ann
Connor Brimer Award Committee, Dartmouth Book Awards, Hackmatack Children's
Choice Book Awards, Nova Scotia Library Association, Halifax Public
Libraries, Halifax Regional Municipality and Writers' Federation of
Nova Scotia. Nominees and winners are chosen by independent peer juries.
The Steering Committee acknowledges the generous support
that has made the Festival a reality: Department of Canadian Heritage,
the Canada Council for the Arts (celebrating it’s 50th anniversary
this year), Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage,
CBC-Radio One, The Chronicle Herald, The Guardian, The Telegram, The
Telegraph-Journal, Atlantic Books Today.
Dartmouth
Book Award for Fiction
Linda Little, Scotch River (Penguin) |
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Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
A cowboy comes home to the Maritimes after his
rodeo partner dies. With no one and nothing to hold on to, Cass
Hutt gives up the riding and ranch life out West to follow a mysterious
land deed back to Scotch River, Nova Scotia. Once he’s back,
sketchy boyhood memories slowly resolve and Cass is faced with
an unforgettable cast of characters bound together by the mysteries
of blood and the burdens of memory.
Growing up in Hawkesbury, Ontario, Linda Little
came to settle in River John, Nova Scotia after studying at Queen’s
and Memorial Universities and living in St. John’s. Her
first novel, Strong Hollow, was nominated for the Thomas
Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
and the Books in Canada Canada/Amazon First Novel Award.
Linda Little's Scotch River has also
won the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize!
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Booksellers'
Choice Award
Ami McKay, The Birth House (Knopf) |
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Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
There’s great import to the birth of Dora
Rare. She’s the first female born to the family in five
generations. Dora’s life continues to be charged as she
befriends and studies under the spirited Acadian midwife, Miss
Babineau. Soon the still-young but brash medical establishment
– in the guise of Dr. Gilbert Thomas – confronts them
and their work in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia. A death casts suspicion
on the midwives and the community divides behind and against.
With historic and well-researched detail, as well as an appreciation
for the political, this narrative brings the past in full dimension
to the present.
Ami McKay, and this book, started out in journalism.
Her work has aired on Sunday Edition and OutFront.
When she and her family moved to Scots Bay, she discovered their
home was in fact a former birth house.
Ami McKay's The Birth House was also nominated for the Thomas
Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize.
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Evelyn
Richardson Prize for Non-fiction
Linden MacIntyre, Causeway: A Passage
from Innocence
(HarperCollins) |
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Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
Fifty-five years ago this year, the Canso Causeway
connecting Cape Breton Island and the Nova Scotia mainland was
completed. For a tiny village this was massive change. The transformation
was also deeply personal as veteran CBC TV journalist Linden MacIntyre
shows in this evocative memoir. Suddenly he could imagine catching
up with his father, Dan Rory, who was always away. Just as quickly,
he could imagine crossing himself, leaving behind people like
his Gaelic-speaking grandmother, Peigeag, who may or may not have
been able to cure or curse you. Added to the clarity of MacIntyre’s
memory and appreciation for character is a sharp sense of humour.
An award-winning journalist on The Fifth
Estate, Linden MacIntyre’s first novel, The Long
Stretch, was shortlisted for the 2000 Dartmouth Book Award
and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award. MacIntyre
was born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and grew up in Port Hastings,
Cape Breton. He now lives in Toronto.
Linden MacIntyre's Causeway was also nominated for the Dartmouth
Book Award for Non-fiction.
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Lillian
Shepherd Memorial Award for Illustration
Brenda Jones, Skunks for Breakfast
(Lesley Choyce, author; Nimbus Publishing) |
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Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
Everything about Pamela’s family and life
is normal until the skunks arrive, and arrive. Then suddenly everything
about her life, and her family, stinks. But Pamela takes heart,
then action with her father, trying their darndest to get rid
of the smelly pests, one after the other after the other.
Brenda Jones depicts the change in Pamela’s
character, her reluctant warming to the unexpectedly cute creatures
and her father’s helplessness in the face of such an odorous
onslaught. Born and raised in PEI, she now works as an illustrator,
commercial designer and film animator in Montreal. She has illustrated
a dozen books, including Lobster in My Pocket and Mr.
Sweetums Wears Pink.
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Margaret
and John Savage First Book Award
John G. Langley, Steam Lion: A Biography
of Samuel Cunard
(Nimbus) |
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| Hi-res pictures:
cover, author
This is the first full-length biography of Halifax
born-and-bred Samuel Cunard. The shipping magnate was a mover
and shaker in the 19th century world of international trade. His
influence endures as the Cunard Line of ocean liners continues
to dominate the seas. (In 2004, the massive Queen Mary II was
launched.) John G. Langley covers the growth of the company and
the other commercial and social concerns of this historic figure.
Halifax resident John Langley is a retired lawyer
and a world authority on Cunard and his company. He founded the
Cunard Steamship Society, a group dedicated to the preservation
and exchange of historical information and related memorabilia
and has consulted on films and documetaries.
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Ann
Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature
Budge Wilson, Friendships
(Penguin) |
  |
Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
Friendships are limitless in their nature and
character. Budge Wilson understands and honours this in Friendships,
a subtle and moving collection of stories about surprising moments
of understanding from unlikely sources. In “The Snake,”
a girl faces her fears with help from a strange ally; in “Father
by Mail,” a teenager writes down all the things he could
never say to the parent who has left him behind; and in “Bruno,”
a boy discovers a way to deal with a bully.
Halifax resident Budge Wilson, one of Canada’s
best-loved authors for young readers, tells perceptive and contemporary
stories that show struggling boys and girls making a connection
with someone who can bring them to a kind of balance.
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Best
Atlantic Published Book
Bruno Bobak: The Full Palette,
Bernard Riordon, Ed.
(Goose Lane Editions) |
  |
Hi-res pictures: cover,
editor (by S. Coutts Sutherland)
Bronislaw Josephus “Bruno” Bobak discovered art in
weekend classes organized by Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer
at the Art Gallery of Toronto (later the Art Gallery of Ontario).
He went on to become Canada’s youngest Official War Artist.
Following that he held leading positions at Emily Carr Institute
of Art and Design in Vancouver and at the UNB Art Centre in Fredericton.
His figurative paintings are known for their bold expressionism
and large scale. In six essays by curators and artists, with beautiful
reproductions of his work, Bobak’s art and life leap from
the page.
Appointed in 1975, Bernard Riordan was founding
director of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. He became director
of Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton in 2003. He’s
also author of Nova Scotia Folk Art: Canada’s Cultural
Heritage and Joe Norris: Painted Visions of Nova Scotia.
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Atlantic
Poetry Prize
Steve McOrmond, Primer on the Hereafter
(Wolsak & Wynn) |
  |
Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
With precision and purpose, Steve McOrmond penetrates
the surfaces of daily life, rural and urban, here and afar, in
search of other, or greater, meanings. The Primer on the Hereafter
cuts through with lines like: “Held hostage in the bank
vault of winter, the captive will identify with the captor / However
peacefully it seems to fall, there is suppressed violence in the
snow.” Home, loneliness, belonging and worth (of the self
and of objects around him) all come into sharp resolve here.
Steve McOrmond lives in Toronto. Born in Nova
Scotia, he grew up on PEI. His work has appeared in Fiddlehead,
Geist and Grain and his first book of poetry, Lean
Days, was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
In 2006, he received a “Highly Commended” award in
the Petra Kenney International Poetry Contest.
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Dartmouth
Book Award for Non-fiction
Keith McLaren,
A Race for Real Sailors
(Douglas & McIntyre) |
  |
Hi-res pictures: cover,
author, author2
The anticipation, pressure and thrill of each
and every International Fisherman’s Cup race – it
ran from 1920 to 1938 – enlivens these pages. It was a 40-mile
ocean course that battered and bruised every ship. Along with
much else, national pride was on the line every time. As many
reviewers have noted, McLaren writes with the firsthand knowledge
of a sailor and the skill of a storyteller (for many, that’s
one and the same).
Born in Victoria, he now lives in North Saanich,
British Columbia. McLaren crossed Canada to attend the Nova Scotia
College of Art and Design in Halifax. He’s worked on the
sea for more than 35 years, most recently as Master of The Spirit
of Vancouver Island. His previous books include Bluenose,
Bluenose II and Light on the Water.
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Thomas
Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize
Linda Little, Scotch River
(Penguin Canada) |
|
Hi-res pictures: cover,
author
A cowboy comes home to the Maritimes after his
rodeo partner dies. With no one and nothing to hold on to, Cass
Hutt gives up the riding and ranch life out West to follow a mysterious
land deed back to Scotch River, Nova Scotia. Once he’s back,
sketchy boyhood memories slowly resolve and Cass is faced with
an unforgettable cast of characters bound together by the mysteries
of blood and the burdens of memory.
Growing up in Hawkesbury, Ontario, Linda Little
came to settle in River John, Nova Scotia after studying at Queen’s
and Memorial Universities and living in St. John’s. Her
first novel, Strong Hollow, was nominated for the Thomas
Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
and the Books in Canada Canada/Amazon First Novel Award.
Linda Little's Scotch River has also
won the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction!
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