Congratulations to 2017 Saskatchewan Book Awards winners Yann Martel and Trevor Herriot! Martel’s The High Mountains of Portugal won the Regina Public Library Book of the Year Award and the City of Saskatoon and Public Library Saskatoon Book Award. Through different characters – a Portuguese pathologist, a Canadian senator, and our protagonist Tomas – Martel weaves a contemporary fable offering a haunting exploration of great love and great loss.

Herriot’s Towards a Prairie Atonement won the City of Regina Book Award. With the help of a Metis Elder, Herriot revisits the history of one corner of the Great Plains and finds himself facing his own responsibility as a decedent of settlers.

Barbara Gowdy and Joel Thomas Hynes are in good company on The Globe and Mail’s most anticipated books of 2017. Gowdy’s Little Sister explores the limits of the human mind through Rose, who runs a small repertory cinema with her widowed mother. As a series of storms strike Toronto, Rose experiences vivid, ultra-realistic dreams about living someone else’s life. In Hynes’ We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night, scrappy Johnny Keough sets out on a cross-country road trip to scatter his girlfriend’s ashes on a B.C. beach and accept the man he needs to become.

We’re excited for New Brunswick Book Awards Finalist Riel Nason! All the Things We Leave Behind, nominated in the category of fiction, takes place in 1977 and follows seventeen-year-old Violet whose brother has disappeared, leaving home without warning.

Now in its second year, the program celebrates books published in the four categories: poetry (sponsored by The Fiddlehead), fiction, non-fiction, and children’s writing (picture books). The competition is open to traditionally published and self-published authors who have lived in the province for three of the last five years, including the award year.

We’re thrilled for Charles Bronfman whose memoir Distilled: A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball and Philanthropy is a finalist for the 2017 National Business Book Award. Chronicling key events in the life of the heir to one of Canada’s greatest fortunes, Distilled provides an exclusive look at the Bronfman legacy.

The National Business Book Award is an annual celebration of Canadian authors of outstanding non-fiction business-related books. Now in its 32nd year the Award continues to gain attention from not only the Canadian business world, but also publishers, authors, journalists, academics, economists and business leaders internationally. The finalist authors will vie for a $30,000 prize that will be awarded to the author of the most outstanding Canadian business-related book published in 2016.

Congrats to Ashley Little, Jennifer Manuel, Carol Shaben and Richard Wagamese on being finalists for 2017 BC Book Prizes. From Ashley Little, author of the award-winning novel Anatomy of a Girl Gang, comes Niagara Motel, a bittersweet story of a young boy forced to learn brutal lessons on his way to becoming a man. In her debut novel, The Heaviness of Things That Float, Jennifer Manuel explores the delicate dynamic between First Nations Communities and non-native outsiders. Mohamed Fahmy and Carol Shaben provide an exclusive glimpse into the closed world of Islamic fundamentalism in The Marriott Cell: An Epic Journey from Cairo’s Scorpion Prison to Freedom. And in Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations  the late Richard Wagamese shares his hard-won wisdom on how to feel the joy in everyday things.

The BC Book Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia writers and publishers.

The Prizes are administered and awarded by members of a non-profit society who represent all facets of the publishing and writing community.

Well done to Publishing Triangle finalist Darren Greer whose novel Advocate earned the author a spot on the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction shortlist. Greer’s Advocate, explores themes of guilt, regret and forgiveness, set against a little town in Nova Scotia dealing with the AIDS crisis in 1984.

Now in its 29^th year, the annual Triangle Awards honour the best LGBTQ fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and trans literature.

Congratulations to the authors of How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist and The Spawning Grounds both nominees for the Ontario Library Association’s Evergreen Award. In How Can I Help? authors David Goldbloom and Pier Bryden take the reader behind the scenes at one of Canada’s leading mental health hospitals. And Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s The Spawning Grounds tells the story of a troubled family, a torn nation, and a dying river.

One of eight programs that form the OLA’s Forest of Reading, the Evergreen Award reading program is comprised of the best titles in Canadian fiction and non-fiction for adults of any age. Over 250,000 Canadians participate each year in the Forest of Reading. A committee of library professionals chooses the titles nominated for the Evergreen Award, which are announced every January. This year, votes from readers will be tallied for the award in September and the winner will be announced during Ontario Public Library Week.

Past winner Lynn Crosbie is on the 2016 ReLit shortlist with her highly original and humorous novel, Where Did You Sleep Last Night. At the centre of this post-punk mystery and romance story is Evelyn Gray, a teenage girl who embarks on a relationship with Kurt Cobain.

Founded in 2000 by Newfoundland author Kenneth J. Harvey, the ReLit Awards are given annually to works by Canadian authors living in Canada, in the novel, short-story and poetry categories. There is no money awarded for the prize but since 2003 the recipients have been presented with a gold ring designed by Newfoundland artisan Christopher Kearney.

We are thrilled for Marc Raboy who joins four other finalists on the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize shortlist with his biographical account of the father of wireless communication.  Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World stands as an authoritative work of its subject and proves that we still live in the world Marconi created.

The RBC Taylor Prize recognizes excellence in Canadian non-fiction writing and emphasizes the development of the careers of the authors it celebrates. Established biennially in 1998 by the trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation, 2017 marks the sixteenth awarding of the RBC Taylor Prize, which commemorates Charles Taylor’s pursuit of excellence in the field of literary non-fiction.

This year’s jurors Jurors John English, Ann MacMillan, and Colin read 101 books written by Canadian authors and submitted by 29 Canadian and international publishers.

Congratulations to Romeo Dallaire for making the Canada Reads 2017 longlist. In his piercing memoir Waiting for First Light, the author of bestsellers Shake Hands with the Devil and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, reflects on the nature of PTSD and the impact of that deep wound on his life since the Rwandan genocide.

Canada Reads first aired as a radio show in 2002. In 2010, the program shifted to live shows in studio with audiences. Canada Reads seeks to answer the question: What is the one book Canadians need now?