Special Feature! Talking Non-Fiction with the 2015 RBC Taylor Prize Nominees

The 2015 shortlist for the RBC Taylor Prize for Non-fiction shows the power of narrative non-fiction. With four out of five nominated titles being memoirs, it's a unique and powerful list that puts paid to the notion that storytelling is limited to the realm of the novel.

The nominees are:

We're thrilled to speak to all five finalists for a brief interview today, where each nominated author tells us about why they love non-fiction, the kind of reading that makes your hair stand on end and some unique ideas for how to celebrate a potential Taylor Prize victory.

Want to catch the finalists in person? Tomorrow all five shortlisted authors will participate in a round table discussion at the Toronto Reference Library (full event details here).

The 2015 winner of the RBC Taylor Prize for Non-fiction will be announced at a luncheon in Toronto this Monday, March 2. Stay tuned to Open Book for news on the winner!
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Open Book:

What do you love most about reading and writing non-fiction, and how do you personally judge the merit of a book of non-fiction?

Plum Johnson:

Memoir is my favourite genre. It’s the literary equivalent of Reality TV. I love being parachuted into other people’s lives. Everyone searches for meaning and everyone at some point feels like a misfit – even those cheerleaders in high school you thought were part of the “in crowd.” So memoir is comforting. As a reader you find out the truth and feel less alone. As a writer the hard part is to dig as deep as you can to reach universal truths, things that connect us all as humans. Nobody can make this stuff up. Sometimes authors disguise their memoirs as fiction. But I love reading those, too.

David O'Keefe:

As a teacher, I am a life-long learner who constantly craves new information and new understanding, so anything that can sweep me in a new direction of understanding is always on my shortlist.

As for how to judge the merit of a non-fiction work: It has to bring something new to the table that will not only entertain but enlighten as well. It must be written in a gripping fashion that will rivet the reader and ensure the message and the meaning is delivered with skill and grace for lasting import.

Barbara Taylor:

I’m a historian, so most of my writing is non-fiction. I love reading biographies, particularly those set in my period (1650-1850). Apart from their intrinsic interest, these books fuel my own writing which these days focuses on psychological states in the past, especially states we usually take for granted — like dreaming, or boredom, or solitariness (the topic of my current book). People in earlier centuries understood these inner states very differently from how we do now. Writing on such themes requires imagination as well as intellectual effort, and it is this combination that I look for in non-fiction, along with a style that conveys a real desire to communicate.

M. G. Vassanji:

I don’t think of books in terms of love. I just read the books that are related to my interests or to the novel that I’m currently writing. They tend to be historical in nature, both pure histories and travel writing of the past. I find the study of the past fascinating. I’ve read about Africa and India in the past and have collected some rare titles. Currently I’m interested in Central Asia and India of the medieval period. In my younger days, though, I read a lot of philosophy.

Kathleen Winter:

I love drinking in the sharpness and transparency of good non-fiction, even if those qualities are illusory. I like believing someone is telling it like it is, even knowing how fragmentary and incomplete the picture might be. I chose to write Boundless as non-fiction because I wanted to share what the land, animals and people impressed upon me in the north, without having readers think I was fabricating. I think I look for the same things in a non-fiction work as I would with any book: literary grace and precision, investigative and emotional depth, psychological intricacy, and vivid attention to concrete detail.

OB:

Tell us briefly about a favourite non-fiction book you've read.

PJ:

Actually, it’s not a book — or is it? It’s one of the binders of Mum’s letters, the one marked, “Red Cross 1944.” I was re-reading it recently because the Imperial War Museum in London expressed interest in having it and I came across a letter that made my hair stand on end. It says, ‘Darling, I can visualize a book about us one day — can’t you? Why don’t you come up with the structure and a plot and we can work on it together.’ I felt like I was in some mixed-up Spielberg movie. Had Mum reached Back to the Future and sent me this message … before I was even born?

DO:

Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940.

One of the greatest historians of the medieval age, I was moved by the way Bloch turns the tables on himself and enters evidence into the public record of his experiences during the Fall of France in 1940 — an event most historians agree is the fulcrum of the modern world. It is Bloch’s approach to the subject which shaped my views on writing non-fiction — in particular, how he methodically peels back the question of “Why France Fell?” to the Germans in just six weeks during the summer of 1940. As Bloch reveals each layer, a nuanced and stinging indictment of French military high command, culture and society appears in an almost three-dimensional fashion in less than 150 pages. Without a doubt, his worked has shaped my approach to history, my research and writing of non-fiction.

BT:

Sources of the Self (Harvard University Press, 1989) by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor traces changing ideas about selfhood from antiquity to the present. It’s an intellectual tour de force which for me has proven an inexhaustible source of inspiration, not least for the elegance and economy of its prose. I strongly disagree with some of its arguments, which makes my frequent re-reading of the book even more stimulating.

If I’m allowed a second choice, I’d want to mention a very different type of non-fiction: Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic (Jonathan Cape, 2012). Bechdel is a cartoonist and this book is a childhood memoir told through a combination of shrewd personal observation and wonderful drawings: extraordinarily innovative and utterly absorbing.

MGV:

The Travels of Ibn Battuta, in several English versions. Ibn Battuta was a 13th-century Moroccan traveller who crossed North Africa to go to north India (Delhi) then went to south India and from there by sea to China; he also went to East Africa by sea and West Africa by camel. In total he travelled 73000 miles, returning home after about 23 years. He’s a traveller who took a lot of interest in people and their habits and stories, as opposed to buildings and governments. For a novelist, that’s perfect.

KW:

I loved Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk, a memoir about grieving her father's death while training her hawk named Mabel. I found it fierce and unsentimental, precise and riveting.

OB:

If you are awarded the 2015 RBC Taylor Prize, how will you celebrate?

PJ:

I will rush out to Oakville, kneel down beside Mum’s memorial plaque, and kiss it. It will confirm my belief in Life After Death… and my suspicion that Mum’s still in control. Mind you, I’m hoping I won’t have to do this. I’m hoping she’s content with the Shortlist.

DO:

I am going to have a very long drink with Ron Beal, who survived the carnage of Blue Beach in Dieppe on that one day in August, 1942.

BT:

I will fly out to Victoria to see my nephew, the novelist Lee Henderson, whose terrific The Road Narrows As You Go (Hamish Hamilton) was published last year. I would love to do a public event with Lee: maybe somebody would organize one!

MGV:

Hard to say.

KW:

I don't allow myself to foresee such a thing. It's impossible to say. I'm very grateful for having Boundless shortlisted for the prize, which is prestigious and respected and results in new readers for the work. I'm celebrating that every day by feeling honoured and happy, with a spring in my step.