British Columbia Book Prizes 2009 Winners

Lovely award, great official site which is well worth a visit. Tragic maintains a summary page at Canlit Awards and had a good look at the 2009 finalists in a previous blog.

Congratulations to a all the winners of the 25th Annual BC Book Prizes- and happy birthday BC literarti dudes, all over for another year.

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
Supported by Friesens and Webcom
Judges: Caroline Adderson, Richard Hopkins, and James Irvine

Winner: The Man Game
by Lee Henderson
Publisher: Penguin Group (Canada)

On a recent Vancouver Sunday afternoon, a young man stumbles upon a secret sport invented more than a century before, at the birth of his city. In 1886, out of the smouldering ashes of the great fire that destroyed much of the city, a former vaudeville performer and two lumberjacks invent a new sport that will change the course of the fledgling city’s history. Thus begins The Man Game, Lee Henderson’s epic tale of loved requited and not, that crosses the contemporary and historical in an extravagant, anarchistic retelling of the early days of a pioneer town on the edge of the known world. Lee Henderson is the author of the award-winning short story collection The Broken Record Technique and is a contributing editor to the arts magazines Border Crossings and Contemporary. He lives in Vancouver

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

Supported by Abebooks
Judges: Robert Brighurst, Barbara Jo May, and Jan Whitford

Winner: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
by Gabor Mate, MD
Publisher: Knopf Canada

In this timely and profoundly original new book, bestselling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours. He proposes a compassionate approach to helping drug addicts and, for the many behaviour addicts among us, to addressing the void addiction is meant to fill. For over seven years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

Supported by the BC Teachers’ Federation
Judges: Margaret Gunning, Evelyn Lau, and Billeh Nickerson

Winner: The Given
by Daphne Marlatt
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

Daphne Marlatt’s haunting and multi-layered long poem reads with all the urgency and depth of a novel. Set in present-day and 1950s Vancouver, The Given begins with the news of a mother’s death, then opens up to become an intricate tapestry of lives, as Marlatt deftly interweaves the past with the present, replicating the arc of memory itself, while questing for — and questioning — the meaning of home and identity. In luminous, deeply resonant fragments, Marlatt resoundingly answers the drive to live with deep attention in a now that is, for all of us, “tangled in the past.” Daphne Marlatt is known for her formally innovative books of poetry, including Steveston, Touch to My Tongue, Salvage, and This Tremor Love Is. She is also the author of two acclaimed novels, Ana Historic and Taken. She lives in Vancouver.

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize

Judges: Janis McKenzie, Joseph Stewart, and Eric Swanick

Winner : Simon Fraser: In Search of Modern British Columbia
by Stephen Hume
Publisher: Harbour Publishing

Journalist and poet Stephen Hume followed in Fraser’s footsteps and canoe wake for four years. He studied fading maps and diaries in archives across North America, interviewed the descendants of people who aided Fraser and retraced Fraser’s route across British Columbia’s vast and varied landscape. This is the story of diligent research and reconstruction of his route, the rigours of early nineteenth-century travel and the peoples and places he saw and recorded.

Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize

Supported by the BC Library Association
Judges: Janice Douglas, James Heneghan, and Tonya Martin

Winner: My One Hundred Adventures
by Polly Horvath
Publisher: Groundwood Books

My One Hundred Adventures tells us how Jane, happy though she is, suddenly feels a kind of itchy restlessness and sets out deliberately to make her life more exciting by having one hundred adventures. She compels her best friend, Ginny, to join her. Some of the adventures are spectacular, others are gentler; and slowly over the summer, Jane begins to figure out more about her family, friends, and life in general.

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize

Supported by Kate Walker and Company
Judges: Ron Jobe, Kari-Lynn Winters, and Bonne Zabolotney

Winner: The King Has Goat Ears
by Katarina Jovanovic
Illustrated by Philippe Beha
Publisher: Tradewind Books

Have you ever had a secret that you knew you shouldn’t share, but the burden of keeping silent was so great you just had to let it out? This is the struggle that Igor, the young apprentice of Miro (the only barber left in the kingdom), experiences after he cuts King Boyan’s hair, and astutely responds to the king that his prominent, goat ears “look just fine.“ Released back to his village, it is not Igor’s intention to betray the king’s secret to his subjects. And so, in a creative turn that draws upon an ancient Serbian folktale, author Katarina Jovanovic (who now resides in Vancouver but who worked for many years in children’s programming for Serbian radio) relieves Igor of the burden of his secret by having him dig a hole in a meadow, shout his secret into it, and cover up the hole again. Surely this can’t be good for Igor.

BC Booksellers’ Choice Award in Honour of Bill Duthie

Supported by BC Booksellers’ Association and Duthie Books
Judged by members of the BC Booksellers’ Association

Winner: Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver
by Stephen Bown
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre

From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific waters as captain of a major expedition of discovery and imperial ambition and valiantly charted four thousand miles of coastline from California to Alaska. His voyage was one of history’s greatest feats of maritime daring, scientific discovery, marine cartography and international diplomacy. Vancouver’s triumph, however, was overshadowed by bitter smear campaigns initiated by enemies which destroyed his reputation. In this gripping tale of maritime daring and betrayal, Stephen Bown offers a long-overdue re-evaluation of one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery. Bown, a resident of Canmore, Alberta, is the author of the internationally acclaimed Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail and A Most Damnable Invention: Dynamite, Nitrates and the Making of the Modern World.