Last night in the Glenn Gould Studio at CBC headquarters, book lovers, publishers and writers from all genres gathered for the announcement of the Writers' Trust of Canada's 2015 slate of prizes. The event was hosted by author and journalist Elizabeth Renzetti.
Four body of work awards were presented, with the $20,000 Matt Cohen Award going to popular Kamloops-based author Richard Wagamese, best known for his fan favourite Indian Horse, which was featured in CBC's Canada Reads competition. The Matt Cohen award is presented to an outstanding author whose life has been dedicated exclusively to writing and literature.
The Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People was awarded to Jan Thornhill, most recently the author of Kyle Goes Alone. Thornhill's win is unique in that she is mainly a non-fiction writer and the prize has generally gone to fiction authors in the past. Sponsored by the Metcalf Foundation, the award carries a $20,000 prize purse.
The Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award, which celebrates an author in mid-career was given to Annabel Lyon, whose smash hit novel The Golden Mean was nominated for the "Canadian Triple Crown" (The Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize). Lyon received $25,000 as part of her award.
The Trust's newest award, the $25,000 Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize, is given to a poet in mid-career. The jury of A.F. Moritz, Susan Musgrave, and Ian Williams praised winner Karen Solie (a past Griffin Poetry Prize winner) for her "disarming, insistent, and unpredictable" poetic voice. The prize is sponsored by the Latner Family Foundation.
Also presented were two of the Trust's most high profile prizes, The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers' Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.
The Journey Prize was awarded to BC author Deirdre Dore for her story "The Wise Baby", originally published in Geist. Dore received $10,000 while an additional $2,000 will go to Geist.
The $25,000 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize went to André Alexis, who is no stranger to the prize, having been nominated in both 1998 and 2014. His winning novel, Fifteen Dogs was published by Coach House Books and is also shortlisted for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Rogers Prize jury was comprised of Aislinn Hunter, Shani Mootoo and Richard Wagamese, who read over 125 books before selecting Fifteen Dogs as the winner.
In addition to the prizes award last night, the Writers' Trust of Canada also administers the Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Prize for Emerging Writers at separate events.
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