Vancouver writer Raoul Fernandes won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award at this year’s BC Book Awards.
The winners of the 32nd Annual BC Book Prizes were announced April 30 in Victoria. Categories include fiction, regional, non-fiction, poetry, children’s lit and more. Nominees come from all over the province, and are selected by the West Coast Book Prize Society.
Winners this year include Vancouver-based poet Raoul Fernandes, who won for his first collection, Transmitter and Receiver (Nightwood Editions).
Other winners include Kelowna-based author Alix Hawley for All True Not a Lie in It (Knopf Canada), a novel about American frontiersman Daniel Boone. The Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize for “the author(s) of the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia” went to Briony Penn for her book The Real Thing: The Natural History of Ian McTaggart Cowan (Rocky Mountain Books), “the father of Canadian ecology.”
The Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for the author of the best original non-fiction literary work went to Brian Brett for Tuco: The Parrot, the Others, and A Scattershot World (Greystone Books). The book is about the author’s decades-long relationship with his African Grey parrot.
Annette LeBox and Stephanie Graegin won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize for Peace is an Offering (Dial Books). The best non-illustrated book written for children was Susan Juby’s The Truth Commission (Razorbill).
The Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award presented to the originating publisher and author(s) of the best book in terms of public appeal, initiative, design, production, and content went to Susan Musgrave, A Taste of Haida Gwaii: Food Gathering and Feasting at the Edge of the World (Whitecap Books). And finally, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence went to another Vancouverite, Alan Twigg. The award recognizes British Columbia writers who have contributed to the development of literary excellence in the province. He has produced the educational newspaper B.C. BookWorld since 1987. It has been cited by the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing as the most essential cog in the infrastructure the supports writing and publishing in British Columbia. Among other feats, Twigg has produced the educational newspaper B.C. BookWorld since 1987 and written 17 books, including histories of Belize and Cuba.
A total of $14,000 is awarded to winners with each prize providing $2,000. The recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award receives $5,000. The BC Book Prizes were established in 1985.
