We are so excited and proud of Susan Juby, winner of the 69th Leacock Medal for Humour for her novel, The Republic of Dirt!
The medal and the accompanying prize were awarded June 11, 2016 at a gala dinner at Geneva Park Conference Centre near Orillia, Ontario. The dinner celebrated all three shortlisted authors, which included Terry Fallis for Poles Apart and Sarah Mian for When the Saints.
Read Susan Juby’s thank you note here.
We are so excited to announce that Susan Juby and Sarah Mian have been shortlisted for the 2016 Leacock Medal for Humour! The prestigious Memorial Medal, accompanied by a $15,000 prize, is awarded annually for the best in Canadian literary humour. The award has attained an international reputation and is the only one of its kind for Canadian humour writing.
Susan Juby has been nominated for Republic of Dirt, published by HarperCollins. Told in four highly distinct, unforgettably hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking voices, Republic of Dirt is about what happens when passions collide with pride and what it takes to save each other, our small part of the planet and ourselves.
Sarah Mian has been nominated for When The Saints, also published by HarperCollins.
When the Saints is her first novel and is the story of a clan of outsiders whose redemption might be found in what they longed to escape: each other.
The third book on the shortlist is Terry Fallis’ Poles Apart.
The winner will be announced at a gala dinner on Saturday, June 11, 2016 at the Geneva Park Convention Centre, just outside Orillia.
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The 2016 Atlantic Book Awards were announced Wednesday, April 27, 2016, in a gala ceremony held in New Brunswick for the first time at Moncton’s Capitol Theatre, and WCA is thrilled for Sarah Mian and Beth Powning, both big winners of the night!
Sarah Mian’s novel, When the Saints, published by HarperCollins, won both the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. The New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction (first time awarded) went to Beth Powning for her novel, A Measure of Light, published by Knopf.
The Atlantic Book Awards Society (ABAS) is a registered non-profit organization with the mandate “to promote and acknowledge excellence in Atlantic Canadian writing and book publishing through an annual awards ceremony and related events.”
We would like to congratulate John Ibbitson, whose biography of Stephen Harper just won the Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing!
Of Stephen Harper, published by McClelland & Stewart, the jury said the following:
“The many ways in which Canada changed during Stephen Harper’s nearly 10 years in power have been well documented. But the man himself has remained a mystery. With impressive access and meticulous research, John Ibbitson writes a remarkable biography that puts us inside Harper’s head during some of the most critical moments of his life, providing the definitive picture to date of one of the most significant Prime Ministers in Canadian history. From his decision to drop out of university to his tumultuous relationship with Reform Leader Preston Manning, from his first date with Laureen to his majority win, Harper is captured magnificently in this gripping read for all Canadians. “
The finalists for the 2016 BC Book Awards have been announced and WCA would like to congratulate our many talented authors who have been nominated!
Pauline Holdstock’s gorgeous novel The Hunter and the Wild Girl, published by Goose Lane, is nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Nominees for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize include:
And last but not least, This Is Sadie by Sara O’Leary, illustrated by Julie Morstad and published by Tundra Books, is nominated for the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize.
You can see a full list of the finalists here.
Congratulations to Rosemary Sullivan, winner of the prestigious 2016 RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction for Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. The $25,000 award was announced on Monday afternoon.
Sullivan’s biography has also won the 2015 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the BC National Non-Fiction Award, and is a finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.
Based on extensive research, including interviews with Svetlana’s surviving family and access to KGB, CIA and FBI files, this impeccable, riveting biography explores the life of Josef Stalin’s only daughter, from her childhood in the Kremlin, to her daring defection to the US via India in 1967, to her troubled years in Middle America. The New York Times Book Review called it “an extraordinary glimpse into one of the grimmest chapters of the past century,” The Independent raved about its “combination of tragedy and history worthy of a Russian novel,” and O, the Oprah Magazine, praised it as “magisterial.”
WCA is thrilled to announce that Rosemary Sullivan’s biography, Stalin’s Daughter, has been shortlisted for the 2016 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.
The PEN Literary Awards are the most comprehensive in the United States, awarding some of the best writers and translators working today in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essays, translation, and more. The winner of the Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award will be announced on March 1, 2016.
Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, published by HarperCollins, is the winner of the Hilary Weston Prize and a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize.
Congratulations to Rosemary Sullivan, Ian Brown, and Wab Kinew on being named finalists for the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize! The announcement was made on Wednesday, January 13th, and the five finalists were chosen by jurors Susanne Boyce, Joseph Kertes, and Stephen J. Toope.
The five finalists are:
• Ian Brown (Toronto, Ontario) for Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?, published by Random House Canada
• Camilla Gibb (Toronto, Ontario) for This Is Happy, published by Doubleday Canada
• David Halton (Ottawa, Ontario) for Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War, published by McClelland & Stewart
• Wab Kinew (Winnipeg, Manitoba) for The Reason You Walk, published by Viking Canada
• Rosemary Sullivan (Toronto, Ontario) for Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, published by HarperCollins Publishers
The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony at the Omni King Edward Hotel in Toronto on Monday, March 7th.
W
e are thrilled to announce that the winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal for an American picture book is Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear, illustrated by U.S. artist Sophie Blackall and written by Lindsay Mattick, great-granddaughter of the Winnipeg veterinarian and soldier who purchased and donated the bear that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh. WCA congratulates Lindsay and Sophie on the success of their truly one-of-a-kind picture book.
The American Library Association’s annual youth media awards announced the winners on January 11th, 2016, as part of the ALA’s midwinter meeting and exhibition in Boston.
Finding Winnie is published by HarperCollins in Canada and Little, Brownin the U.S.
Westwood Creative Artists, Canada’s largest literary agency representing more than 400 writers, is looking for a candidate to fill a full-time 12 week internship position, beginning Monday February 22nd and ending May 13th.
A considerable amount of time during this internship will be spent working with WCA’s international rights director and rights assistant in preparation for the London Book Fair in April. There will also be the opportunity to work with other WCA agents and at the reception desk. In the rights department, the intern will be involved in catalogue proofreading, general preparation and follow-up for the London Book Fair. There will also be some data entry and other administrative tasks. While working with individual agents, the intern will understand how the agent manages his or her authors, learn about Canadian and US submissions, and provide needed support in a varied number of capacities. At the reception desk, the intern will really be at the “nerve centre” of the agency. Tasks will include daily administration work, reading submissions, and receiving authors and publishers as they arrive at the agency.
We offer a competitive honorarium of $1500, a lively and congenial work environment at Spadina and Harbord, and an excellent opportunity to gain an overview of the publishing industry in Canada and abroad through the lens of the literary agent and the writers we represent.
The ideal candidate will be eager to learn, highly organized, energetic, and have a positive outlook. Strong proofreading and computer skills required; previous office experience and knowledge of the publishing industry an asset; passionate attention to detail and accuracy a must. Please send your resume and cover letter to the attention of Carolyn Forde at Carolyn@wcaltd.com at your earliest convenience or by January 20th. We appreciate all applications but will only reply to candidates selected for an interview.
