Current Award Winners

The 2008 winner is Paulette Jiles, Utopia, Texas, for Stormy Weather (HarperCollins Canada. ISBN: 9780002006040).

Paulette Jiles was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks and moved to Canada in 1969 after graduating with a degree in Spanish literature from the University of Missouri. She spent eight years as a journalist for the CBC in northern Ontario and recounts some of her experiences in her book North Spirit. She is the bestselling author of Enemy Women, her acclaimed debut novel, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Award. She has also won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Award and has been nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize as well as the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Paulette Jiles currently lives in the Texas hill country near San Antonio.

Contact Information

For interviews or information about Paulette Jiles, contact Lindsey Love:

• E-mail:
• Phone: (416) 975-9334

Praise for Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles

“Jiles’s eloquent, engaging novel celebrates four strong women toughing out the Great Depression…[a] gritty saga.”—Publishers Weekly

“[A] stirring story…of self and home in language as spare and stark as the Texas landscape.”—Booklist

Judges’ Comments

“A poetic souls shines through a gritty, touching tale of survival and family and love. The land is as much a character in this book as any of the people, and it, and they, resonate like Texas hardpack in the glimmer of the sun.”

“Jiles’ story of rough and tumble, depression-era East Texas, its oil fields, its illegal horse racing, and its unforgettable characters is fresh. Her prose, too, is vital, sweeping over vast distances in time and space at one moment, and honing into focus on a single scene the next. It is difficult to shake certain images in this book. A great read.”

The 2008 winner is Asa Boxer, Montreal, for The Mechanical Bird (Véhicule Press. ISBN: 9781550652277).

Asa Boxer is the author of a book of poetry entitled The Mechanical Bird (2007). His work has been anthologized in The New Canon (2005), Montréal vue par ses poètes (2006), Oxford Poetry Broadsides (Series 3–2007), and Jacket 34 (online–2007). He has published poems, essays and articles with Books in Canada, Canadian Notes and Queries, Maisonneuve, Arc, enRoute and Poetry London. His suite of poems, entitled "The Workshop" won the 2004 CBC/enRoute Prize.
 

For more info: www.asaboxer.com

Contact Information

For interviews or information about Asa Boxer, contact Simon Dardick:

• E-mail:
• Phone: (514) 844-6073

Judges’ Comments

“Here is an imagination able to fashion poetry out of grease and rust; out of a pocket or a table. Asa Boxer views the mechanical world that surrounds us, imbuing it with significance. Anyone reading these poems will never look at a hammer in the same way again.
But The Mechanical Bird also engages the animate world, portraying it with wit and energy. A tree, for instance, is described as lsquo;growing blind with anticipation…tying knots into its skin.’ (p.31)
A sequence on ‘The lie’ offers this amusing advice:
    Butter your words on both sides
    Not thickly but with finesse. (57)
Innovative rhymes, unerring rhythms and a sure way with words mark Boxer’s style. The Mechanical Bird is a welcome addition to Canadian poetry.”

“Asa Boxer’s, The Mechanical Bird, is the best book of a very current stream in Canadian writing: the western tradition of writing in form and often metre from the long history within which we write poetry. The form arrives easily, confidently and convincingly. Boxer’s imagination is quixotic, surprising, compelling and his mind is sure. His poetry is like playing a harpsicord—when there were 32 notes compared with our now-thin octave of 8—striking all the right keys en-route to an effortless combination of subject and the best way to write about it. Music for the mind.”

The 2008 winner is Robert Wright, Toronto, for Three Nights in Havana (HarperCollins Canada. ISBN: 9780002006262).

Robert Wright, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Trent University, specializing in Canadian history, and foreign policy and sovereignty issues. He is the author of Virtual Sovereignty: Nationalism, Culture and the Canadian Question; Hip and Trivial: Youth Culture, Book Publishing and the Greying of Canadian Nationalism; and A World Mission: Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for a New World Order, 1918–1939. He resides in Toronto.

Please visit www.robertwright.ca for more information.

Contact Information

For interviews or information about Robert Wright, contact Emma Ingram:

• E-mail:
• Phone: (416) 975-9334

Praise for Three Nights in Havana by Robert Wright

“While Wright is clearly an admirer of Trudeau, he is by no means an apologist, demonstrating an even hand in both praise and criticism….. Three Nights in Havana is detailed but never dull, analytical but never pedantic. It is circumscribed, but never narrow or myopic.”—Quill & Quire (starred review)

“It is unusual for statesmen to become close friends, particularly when they face each other across a gaping ideological divide. Nevertheless, Robert Wright reveals that Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro developed an unusually intense personal and intellectual intimacy that literally lasted till death did them part and the Cuban leader came to bid farewell at his Canadian friend’s funeral. While exploring their intriguing, decades-long relationship, Wright weaves into his story such central issues of the times as the Kennedy-Khrushchev Cuban missile crisis, Castro’s military intervention in Angola, and CIA-sponsored terrorism against Cubans at home and in Canada. The Trudeaus’ rollercoaster marriage and Fidel’s flirtation with Margaret add an intensely human dimension to this easily digestible mix of biography, international relations, and politics.”—Stephen Clarkson, co-author of Trudeau and Our Times

“An elegant, wonderfully nuanced account of the remarkable relationship between Fidel Castro and Pierre Trudeau. There are poignant portraits of the solitary Trudeau and his capricious, hippie-bride Margaret, whose defiance of convention both appalled and entertained. Also a terrific history of the two U.S. neighbours who defied the superpower sandwiched between them and reaped the diplomatic and economic dividends from doing so.”—Ann Louise Bardach, author of Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana

Judges’ Comments

“Robert Wright’s Three Nights in Havana is an eloquent, insightful, and well-researched, documenting of an unlikely friendship between two of the time’s most charismatic political leaders—Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro. But it is also much more than that, for interwoven with this story of two friends is an examination of Cold War politics through the prism of Canadian-American-Cuban relationships. It is also simply a great read.”

“From the very first page this book captures the unusual and fascinating relationship between Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro. What is so interesting and well written about this book is Mr. Wright’s ability to show both of these men as people and friends first and in that context to see that period of history of both Canada and Cuba. This book is a pure pleasure to read.”

This award is made possible through the generosity of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and Playwrights Canada Press.

The 2008 winner is Colleen Murphy, Toronto, for The December Man (l’homme de décembre) (Playwrights Canada Press. ISBN: 9780887545955).

Colleen Murphy’s play The December Man (L’homme de décembre) won the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Beating Heart Cadaver was nominated for the same award in 1999. Murphy’s fascination with large theatrical writing resulted in The Piper and Down in Adoration Falling. She is also a filmmaker and her distinct, award-winning films have played in film festivals around the world. Murphy is writing two new plays and is currently Playwright in Residence with Tapestry New Opera Works where she is working on a five-act libretto entitled The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. with composer Aaron Gervais.

For more info: www.colleenmurphy.ca

Contact Information

For interviews or information about Colleen Murphy, contact Michael Petrasek at Kensington Literary Representation:

• E-mail:
• Phone: (416) 979-0187

Judges’ Comments

“Murphy took a shocking event—the 1989 Montreal massacre—and told a startling, redemptive tale; great craft and passion.”

“This play has well-defined characters and a strong plot. Due to the non-traditional structure of this play, we know how it will end, yet still there is a strong pull to read to the end, to watch the characters experience the inevitable tragedies.”

This award is made possible through the generosity of BookTelevision, Canada’s only television station dedicated to writing in all its forms.

The 2008 winner is Mark Haroun, Calgary, for an impressive body of recent work.

 
Mark Haroun’s plays have received workshops at Concrete Theatre’s New Sprouts Festival, Workshop West’s Kaboom! Festival and the National Arts Centre’s On The Verge Festival. A Giraffe in Paris received its premiere at the Citadel Theatre in 2005 and was subsequently produced in Montreal at Geordie Productions. The play was the winner of the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes award for best production for young audiences and was short listed for the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama at the Alberta Book Awards. Mark currently resides in Calgary where he is a story editor on CBC’s one-hour dramatic series Heartland.

Contact Information

For interviews or information about Mark Haroun, contact him directly by e-mail:

• E-mail:

The 2008 Allan Sangster Award winner was announced at the gala banquet at the Canadian Authors Association’s annual CanWrite! Conference at the University of Alberta in Edmonton on Saturday July 5, 2008.

The Allan Sangster Award honours one of the CAA’s own members for extraordinary service to the Association.

The 2008 winner is Suzanne Harris.

Suzanne Harris has been a member of the CAA for over nine years, served as the 2005-07 Alberta Branch President, was appointed as Alberta’s Regional Vice-President in 2004/2005 and also served as a member of the CAA national strategic planning team until 2007.

She was the coordinator of CanWrite! 2008 and played a major role in making this conference such an outstanding success. Colleagues can vouch that if there is a crunch, this is the individual who they turn to for assistance and an extra set of hands.

Suzanne holds a degree in English Literature from the University of Alberta and a diploma in Public Relations from Grant MacEwan College.

She has worked in communications for the Edmonton Heritage Festival and for various departments within the Alberta Government. She is a prize-winning poet and has been free-lance writing and editing since 1998.