Once more Sunshine Coast publishers stand to shine at the BC Book Prizes with nine nominations. The awards honour the best books published by B.C. authors, in all genres. Sunshine Coast-based publishers Harbour Publishing, Douglas & McIntyre have been nominated for seven awards. Gibsons-based Nightwood Editions has been nominated for one and Caitlin Press in Halfmoon Bay nominated for one.
The titles in the running for these prestigious prizes include The Peace in Peril: The Real Cost of the Site C Dam (Harbour Publishing) by Christopher Pollon, with photos by Ben Nelms, and Crossing Home Ground: A Grassland Odyssey through Southern Interior British Columbia (Harbour Publishing) by David Pitt-Brooke, both of which are finalists for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, which is awarded to the author of the book which contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia.
Peace Dancer (Harbour Publishing), a beautifully illustrated children’s book in the Northwest Coast Legends series by Roy Henry Vickers and Robert Budd, is a finalist for both the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize and the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award. Peace Dancer is the only children’s title to be shortlisted for the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award, which is presented to the originating publisher and the author of the book that is the most successful in terms of public appeal, initiative, design, production and content.
Also vying for the Booksellers’ Choice Award is the national bestseller Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas & McIntyre) by the late Richard Wagamese – one of B.C.’s most acclaimed First Nations authors – and Wade Davis: Photographs (Douglas & McIntyre) by renowned anthropologist and author Wade Davis. This impressive coffee-table book features 140 of Davis’s best photos taken over the course of
his career.
The Heaviness of Things That Float (Douglas & McIntyre) by Jennifer Manuel is shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Although the book is Manuel’s debut novel, it has made regular appearances on the BC Bestseller List since it was published in 2016.
Nightwood Editions has been nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for Adele Barclay’s debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You. Barclay’s poetry is a love letter to the uncomfortable and the unfathomable, inspiring us to question our understanding of the world.
Caitlin Press was nominated for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction prize for Gently to Nagasaki by Joy Kogawa. The author knows what it means to be classified as the enemy, and she seeks urgently to get beyond the “us” and “them” division. Interweaving her own life with catastrophes like the bombing of Nagasaki and the massacre by the Imperial Japanese Army at Nanking, she wrestles with essential questions like good and evil, love and hate, rage and forgiveness, determined above all to arrive at her own truths.
The winners will be announced at the 33rd annual Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala on April 29 at the Pinnacle Harbourfront Hotel in Vancouver. B.C. Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon will be in attendance. For more information about the prizes and for the rest of the nominees, visit www.bcbookprizes.ca.
