Congrats to Karolyn Smardz Frost, whose compelling work of narrative non-fiction Steal Away Home: One Woman’s Epic Flight to Freedom – And Her Long Road Back to the South is the winner of the 2017 Speaker’s Book Award. The Honourable Dave Levac, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, made the announcement during a ceremony at the Ontario Legislature on March 5th, 2018. Steal Away Home will be featured at the Legislative Library, and available for purchase at the Legislative Assembly Gift Shop.
A beautiful review for a beautiful book! Quill & Quire gives a starred review to Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli authored by Kyo Maclear and illustrated by Julie Morstad.
We’re delighted to announce that Yak and Dove author Kyo Maclear has received the 2017 IODE Ontario Jean Throop Book Award. The award encourages excellence in Canadian children’s literature and is presented to an illustrator or author who resides in Ontario. Previous IODE Jean Throop Book Award winners include Dennis Lee, Barbara Reid, Kenneth Oppel, Chris Hadfield, and Terry and Eric Fan.
Kyo Maclear’s Birds Art Life and Kim Fu’s The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore are on the Markham Reads 2018 shortlist! Markham Reads is an annual celebration of books, ideas, and community. For the seventh year running, they’re encouraging everyone in Markham to connect with new ideas and with one another by reading the same book. Programs and events related to the winning book will take place in July and August 2018.
Jamil Jivani, author of Why Young Men, joined Matt Galloway on CBC’s Metro Morning to discuss his new memoir and why young men turn to violence and radicalization. Listen to the interview here.
Congratulations to Alisa Smith, whose novel Speakeasy is on the UK-based Walter Scott Prize Academy’s recommended reading list for 2018. The list of 20 books includes historical novels from across the UK, Ireland, and Commonwealth countries.
We’re thrilled for Roz Nay, whose debut thriller Our Little Secret has been receiving fantastic reviews.
The thriller has also popped up on Us Weekly‘s list of Four Killer New Thrillers, Entertainment Weekly‘s 20 New Books to Read in April, and BookBub‘s list of 26 Books Like Gone Girl Coming in 2018.
The movie adaptation of Richard Wagamese’s novel Indian Horse, which boasts Clint Eastwood as Executive Producer, has been called, “so much more than just another Canadian movie” by Maclean’s. To read the full review, click here.
Acclaimed novelist Ann Y K Choi’s debut picture book, ONCE UPON AN HOUR, draws on the traditional Korean practice of timekeeping, in which the twelve animals of the zodiac are assigned to two-hour sections of the 24-hour clock, to show how we can make all the difference in the world if we work together, illustrated by Soyeon Kim, to Liz Kemp at Orca Books, for publication in Fall 2020, by Jackie Kaiser of Westwood Creative Artists (World).
Award-winning author David A. Robertson’s GHOSTS, the third book in The Reckoner series, a supernatural YA mystery set in the northern community of Wounded Sky First Nation, to Catherine Gerbasi at HighWater Press (imprint of Portage & Main Press), for publication in October 2019, by Jackie Kaiser of Westwood Creative Artists (World).
From the authors and illustrator of the internationally bestselling, Caldecott Medal-winning picture book Finding Winnie, Lindsay Mattick and Josh Greenhut’s WINNIE’S GREAT WAR, with art by Sophie Blackall, based on the true, remarkable wartime adventures undertaken by the extraordinary bear who inspired Winnie-the-Pooh, to Suzanne Sutherland at HarperCollins Canada for publication in Fall 2018, by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists and Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management for the authors, and Nancy Gallt at Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency for the illustrator (Canada English).
A taut literary thriller by the author of The Dark Virgin, Oakland Ross’s SWIMMING WITH HORSES intertwines the stories of a solitary Canadian teenager and a blue-eyed, gun-toting South African bad girl who spends the summer of 1963 in southern Ontario horse country, to Scott Fraser at Dundurn, for publication in February 2019, by Jackie Kaiser of Westwood Creative Artists (World).
From the author of the Giller Award-winning novel Late Nights on Air, Elizabeth Hay’s ALL THINGS CONSOLED: A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR, a startling and beautiful memoir about the drama of her parents’ end, and the longer drama of being their daughter, pitched as for fans of Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant and Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, to Martha Kanya-Forstner at McClelland & Stewart for publication in September 18, 2018 by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists (Canada English). UK & Commonwealth excluding Canada to Christopher MacLehose at MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus, for publication in 2019 by Carolyn Forde on behalf of Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists.
From the acclaimed novelist of Brother, David Chariandy’s I’VE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU: A LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER is an intimate and profoundly beautiful meditation on the politics of race today, pitched as in the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, to Martha Kanya-Forstner at McClelland & Stewart for publication May 29, 2018 by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists (Canada English). World English excluding Canada to Alexa von Hirschberg at Bloomsbury UK & US for publication in April 2019 by Carolyn Forde on behalf of Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists.
David Chariandy’s second novel Brother takes place in Scarborough, Ontario but the prize-winning work of fiction has grabbed the attention of critics across the pond. The Gaurdian‘s Dina Nayeri calls it, “an exquisite novel, crafted by a writer as talented and precise as Junot Díaz and Dinaw Mengestu. It is elegant, vital, indubitably dope – the most moving book I’ve read in a year.” In The Observer, Arifa Akbar calls the novel “A breathtaking achievement … a compulsive, brutal and flawless novel that is full of accomplished storytelling with not a word spare.”