Charles Foran is the winner of the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award in non-fiction for Mordecai: The Life & Times!

Canada’s oldest award for English and French-language literature, the Governor General’s Literary Award is the latest in a string of major prizes for Foran. Earlier this year, Mordecai: The Life & Times, took home the inaugural Hilary Weston Prize and the prestigious Charles Taylor Prize, and today was called “probably the single most awarded book of any genre in the history of Canadian literature” by The Globe and Mail.

After winning the award, Foran told CBC News, “I wanted the book in a sense to be big enough, bold enough…to be worthy of Mordecai Richler. To have written a small timid biography with 200 pages of footnotes and 200 pages of text would have been a disservice to this man who was so full of appetite, so full of energy. In his books and in his life.”

For more information about Foran and Mordecai: The Life & Times, please visit: www.charlesforan.ca.

WINNER 2011
Governor General’s Literary Award – Nonfiction
WINNER 2011
Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
WINNER 2011
Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize
WINNER 2011
Canadian Jewish Book Award
FINALIST 2011
British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction
FINALIST 2011
Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award Non-fiction Book of the Year

Four WCA clients have been longlisted for the prestigious 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award: Caroline Adderson for The Sky is Falling (Thomas Allen Publishers), David Bergen for The Matter with Morris (HarperCollins Canada), Yann Martel for Beatrice & Virgil (Knopf Canada) and Beth Powning for The Sea Captain’s Wife (Knopf Canada).

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind. It involves libraries from all corners of the globe, and is open to books written in any language. The shortlist will be announced in April.

For more information, and to find jury citations, please visit:

http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2011/longlist.htm

WCA is happy to announce that Joel Yanofsky, Michelle Shepherd and Richard Gwyn have been longlisted for the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. One hundred and thirty-four books were nominated for the $40,000 prize by 35 publishers from across the country. From that entry, the prize jury has selected a longlist of ten books.

Joel Yanofsky, Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education In Autism (Viking Canada)

Michelle Shepherd, Decade Of Fear (Douglas & McIntyre)

Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Vol. 2: 1867-1891 (Random House Canada)

For more information please visit:

http://www.bcachievement.com/nonfiction/longlist.php

Trevor Cole’s Practical Jean (McClelland & Stewart) has been nominated in the Best Fiction category for the 18th annual Hamilton Literary Awards. The prize will be given out on November 14th.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.artshamilton.ca/recent.html

Westwood Creative Artists is thrilled to announce that Charles Foran’s best-selling biography Mordecai: The Life & Times (Knopf Canada), was named winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction Tuesday evening, the richest annual literary award for a nonfiction book published in Canada.

Mordecai: The Life & Times won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction earlier this year and is in the running for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction, to be announced Nov. 15.

The Writers’ Trust prize was awarded by the Hon. Hilary M. Weston in Toronto’s Koerner Hall, in the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning.

The jury citation referred to Foran’s book as “an epic work of scholarship and energy … inclusive, intelligent … yet laced with the underlying perfume of tragedy … well written, exciting to read, even-handed, and magisterial.”

Foran is represented at WCA by Jackie Kaiser.

For more information about Charles Foran and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize, please visit:

http://www.charlesforan.com/

http://www.writerstrust.com/Awards/Hilary-Weston-Writers-Trust-Prize.aspx

WCA would like to extend congratulations to Rabindranath Maharaj for winning the Toronto Book Award last night for his novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy (Knopf Canada) .

For more information please visit:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/rabindranath-maharaj-wins-toronto-book-award/article2200509/

WCA is happy to announce that Jack Hodgins’ The Master of Happy Endings (Thomas Allen & Son) has won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Victoria+writer+Jack+Hodgins+honoured/5543064/story.html

WCA is thrilled to announce that Charles Foran, Jonathan Garfinkel and Richard Gwyn have all been shortlisted for 2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards; Garfinkel in the Drama category, Gwyn and Foran in the Non-fiction category. The GGs, Canada’s national book awards celebrate the excellence of Canadian writers, illustrators and translators.

• Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life & Times (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)

• Jonathan Garfinkel, House of Many Tongues
  (Playwrights Canada Press)

• Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867-1891
  (Random House Canada)

For more information please visit:

http://987321654.canadacouncil.net/en/newsandevents-nouvellesetevenements/News%20release%20-%20communique_11oct.aspx

WCA is happy to announce that Romeo Dallaire and Joel Yanofsky have been shortlisted for the Mavis Gallant Prize; Dallaire for They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children (Random House Canada) and Yanofsky for Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism (Penguin Canada).

For more information please visit:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Quebec+Writers+Federation+announces+2011+finalists/5516074/story.html#ixzz1anp20PWd

Here’s what the jury had to say: “Readers who doubt the modern world is grotesque and hilarious, heart‐stopping and wild, may discover they are delighted with Zsuzsi Gartner’s wonderful collection of stories, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. From the specifications of covetable stereo equipment to the worries of the former terrorist, from the language of IKEA to gardening as warfare, this book shows the short story form at its savage best, each story capturing, with brilliant economy and grace, not only entire worlds but whole mindsets as they explode into eloquence. Gartner is one of the supreme noticers in contemporary fiction, and with this book she has produced a rare work of wisdom and laughter.”

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is Canada’s most distinguished literary prize, awarding $50,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English.

For more information on the prize, please visit:  www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca. For rights inquiries, please contact David Whiteside, david.whiteside@ca.penguingroup.com.