The Sunshine Coast was well represented at the 33rd annual Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala on Saturday, April 29 in Vancouver.
Pender Harbour based publisher Douglas & McIntyre had three nominations and won two awards in two categories.
Douglas & McIntyre’s Jennifer Manuel won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for her debut novel, The Heaviness of Things That Float (2016). This prize is awarded to the author of the best original work of literary fiction in British Columbia.
The Heaviness of Things That Float is a deft exploration of the delicate dynamic between First Nations communities and non-native outsiders. Through Manuel’s skillful depiction of a woman who has spent the last 40 years serving as a nurse in a remote West Coast First Nations community, the novel throws down the gauntlet to every non-First Nations Canadian in this time of Truth and Reconciliation: try to know the other, but never assume to know the other.
Douglas & McIntyre’s other award-winning title is Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (2016), by the acclaimed late author Richard Wagamese. Embers, which won the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award for the best book published in B.C., is a carefully curated selection of everyday reflections by the author. Wagamese found lessons in both the mundane and sublime, and the book explores various manifestations of grief, joy, recovery, beauty, gratitude and spirituality.
Publisher Howard White accepted the award on behalf of both the deceased author and Douglas & McIntyre. In his acceptance speech, White acknowledged the impressive gift that Wagamese possessed and shared with his many readers. “Richard left behind a tremendous legacy of literature that explores the dynamics between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. We should all be grateful.”
Nightwood Editions, run by Gibsons resident and councillor Silas White, also had an author take home one of the coveted awards. The press’ debut author Adèle Barclay won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for her collection If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (2016).
With “cracking imagery and whip-smart delivery” (Winnipeg Free Press) Barclay’s poems contain a sincere desire to connect to others, an essential need to reach out, to redraft the narratives that make kinship radical and near. These poems are love letters to the uncomfortable, the unfathomable, and the altered geographies that define our own misshapen understandings of the world.
The BC Book Prizes, established in 1985, are awarded annually in seven categories, with the intent to celebrate the best writing and publishing in the province. The awards carry a cash prize of $2,000.
– Submitted
