TORONTO – Books on Mordecai Richler, Sir John A. Macdonald, and a popular marine park in British Columbia are among the finalists for this year’s $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
The short list of five books announced Tuesday includes “Mordecai: The Life & Times” (Knopf Canada) by Peterborough, Ont.-based Charles Foran, which won the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize earlier this year.
Also nominated is Richard Gwyn’s “Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times; Volume Two: 1867-1891” (Random House Canada).
Gwyn, an officer of the Order of Canada who lives in Toronto, won the 2008 Charles Taylor Prize for his first volume on Canada’s first prime minister.
CBC Radio personality Grant Lawrence made the cut for “Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nudist Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound” (Harbour Publishing). The book chronicles his experiences in his family cabin on the storied piece of B.C. coastline.
Charlotte Gill, whose debut story collection “Ladykiller” was a finalist for the 2005 Governor General’s Award, is on the short list for “Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree Planting Tribe” (Greystone Books/David Suzuki Foundation).
Rounding out the short list for this year’s Writers’ Trust non-fiction prize – which is billed as the richest annual literary award for a book of non-fiction published in Canada – is “Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live” by novelist Ray Robertson (Biblioasis).
A jury composed of writers Brian Brett, Devyani Saltzman and Russell Wangersky selected the finalists, who will each receive $5,000.
The eventual prize winner, who will be announced Oct. 25 in Toronto, receives a total of $60,000.
This year’s Writers’ Trust non-fiction prize also includes an educational component, in which Canadian high schools will receive a teaching resource booklet to connect students with the finalists’ works.
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