We’re excited for authors Jamil Jivani and Jonathan F. Vance, both finalists for the 2019 Speaker’s Book Award!

Jivani’s Why Young Men proposes a positive path and offers a counterintuitive, often provocative argument for a sea change in the way we look at young men, and for how they see themselves.

In A Township at War Vance takes the reader from rural Canadian field and farm to the slopes of Vimy Ridge and the mud of Passchendaele, and shows how a tightly knit Ontario community was consumed and transformed by the trauma of war.

The Speaker’s Book Award honours non-fiction and public policy works by Ontario authors covering historical and cultural aspects of the province. The winning entry will be announced at an awards ceremony held at the Ontario Legislative Building in the fall.

Westwood Creative Artists, one of Canada’s largest literary agencies representing more than 400 writers, is looking for a candidate to fill a full-time 12-week internship position, beginning Monday August 19^th and ending Friday November 8^th, with possible flexibility for the right candidate.

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 Frankfurt Book Fair in October. 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 Frankfurt Book Fair. There will also be some data entry and other administrative tasks. While working with individual agents, the intern will understand how the agents manage their 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 an honorarium of $1500, a lively and congenial work environment in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, 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 cover letter, resume, and references to the attention of Meg Wheeler at meg@wcaltd.com at your earliest convenience or by July 8^th. We appreciate all applications but will only reply to candidates selected for an interview.

Congrats to the 2018 Foreword Indies Winners! We’re thrilled to share that Christine Higdon’s The Very Marrow Of Our Bones won the Editor’s Choice prize for fiction and Kevin Major’s One For The Rock won gold in the Mystery (Adult Fiction) category.

Foreword Reviews, a book review journal focusing on independently published books, recognizes the best books published from small, indie, and university presses, as well by self-published authors.

The Book Publishers Association of Alberta has announced its 2019 Alberta Book Publishing Awards Shortlist and we’re thrilled to see Keith Maillard’s Twin Studies made the cut!

From the Publisher:

“Twin Studies is a masterful novel that explores the complicated bonds between twins and siblings, friends and lovers; the role of class and money; and the nature of gender and sexuality. It’s a novel with characters who are real, their relationships a rich world that readers will thoroughly lose themselves in. No other contemporary novel so deftly explores the intersection between our inner lives and our public lives — that ‘we’re not what people see.'”

Wonderful news for Victoria, B.C., poet Eve Joseph, the Canadian winner of the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection Quarrels. Joseph was presented with the $65,000 prize – the most lucrative in the country for poetry – at a gala ceremony in Toronto on June 6.

Congratulations to Governor General Literary Award-winning author Susin Nielsen, whose touching and funny middle-grade story No Fixed Address has won the 2019 IODE Violet Downey Book Award.

Her previous titles include YA reads We Are All Made of Molecules and Optimists Die First, her endearing picture book Princess Puffybottom . . . and Darryl and more.

We’re delighted to share that WCA author’s Susin Nielsen and Tiffany Stone have been shortlisted for the 2020 Chocolate Lily Book Awards! Nielsen’s No Fixed Address is a finalist in the Novel Category (Grades 4-7) and Stone’s Tree Song illustrated by Holly Hatam, is a finalist in the Picture Book category.

Created in 2002, the Chocolate Lily Book Awards strives to increase literacy for grade school children in British Columbia while celebrating BC authors and illustrators.

Kent Monkman, a Cree artists widely known for his provocative interventions into Western European and American art history, has been selected to create two monumental paintings for The Met’s Great Hall. Mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) will run from December 19, 2019 to April 12, 2020.

This installation is part of a new series of contemporary activations at The Met in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art inspired by the collection, establishing a dialogue between the commissioned works, the collection, the space, and audiences.

Sarah Atkinson of Tyndale has acquired world rights to Ottawa-based editor of Faith Today Karen Stiller’s THE MINISTER’S WIFE, an insightful, moving and often humorous memoir that explores balancing expectations and crises of all kinds including those of faith in her role as a minister’s spouse with her own identity and path to self-fulfillment. Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists negotiated with deal, with publication slated for spring 2020.

Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s THE CURE FOR DEATH BY LIGHTNING, to Partizanska knjiga (Serbia), by Vuk Perisic at PLIMA Literary Agency, on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for Jackie Kaiser.

Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson’s EMPTY PLANET: THE SHOCK OF GLOBAL POPULATION DECLINE, to Les Arènes (France), by Anna Jarota at Anna Jarota Agency; and to JP Sluzbeni glasnik (Serbia), by Vuk Perisic at PLIMA Literary Agency, on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for John Pearce.

Yann Martel’s BEATRICE & VIRGIL, to Alatoran (Azerbaijan), by Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for Jackie Kaiser.

Yann Martel’s LIFE OF PI audio rights, to Planeta/Destino (Spain), by Sandra Bruna at Sandra Bruna Agency, on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for Jackie Kaiser.

Josef Škvorecký’s THE BASS SAXOPHONE radio rights, to Radio Literatura (Poland), by Tomasz Bereziński at Graal Literary Agency, on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists.

Richard Wagamese’s INDIAN HORSE and MEDICINE WALK, to Blessing Verlag (Germany), by Hannah Fosh at Liepman Agency, on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for John Pearce.