David Chariandy’s long-awaited second novel Brother has been shortlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Awards. Brother, winner of the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the 2018 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991.
This is the 44th year of the Toronto Book Awards.
We’re delighted that Christine Higdon’s The Very Marrow of Our Bones earned a spot on Canadian Living’s The Best Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List. Prior to making this “ultimate summer reading list” Kirkus Review called it, “An ambitious debut novel that will make you cry, cringe, and laugh.”
WCA is delighted to announce that award-winning and acclaimed middle-grade author Charis Cotter has joined the agency, to be represented by Hilary McMahon. Forthcoming from Charis this fall is The Ghost Road, published by Tundra Books. The striking art has just been chosen to grace the cover of Booklist’s SF/Fantasy & Horror spotlight issue, and the novel received an advance starred review from Kirkus, where it was proclaimed “a complex and engrossing story.”
We are thrilled for the three WCA authors on the 2018 Heritage Toronto Award for Historical Writing list of nominees!
The Whisky King by Trevor Cole
Steal Away Home by Karolyn Smardz Frost
Lightfoot by Nicholas Jennings
The winner will be announced on October 29th, 2018 at an awards ceremony.
Author Jamil Jivani talks to Nam Kiwanuka on “The Agenda” about his cancer diagnosis, which he learned of on the cusp of publishing his first book, Why Young Men. Jivani’s debut book, in which he argues for a sea change in the way we look at young men, and for how they see themselves, has been longlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Awards.
For the full interview, click here.
We’re very proud of WCA’s Carolyn Forde, one of the only two Canadian agents to participate in a 25-member delegation that met with publishers in Munich and Berlin as part of a trade mission planned in advance of the 2020 Frankfurt Book Fair. Now we’re working hard to help our authors’ books travel too! To learn more about the trip, click here.
Congratulations to Linda Bailey! Her book, The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library, has been nominated for a Red Cedar Book Award for 2018-2019.
Every year, thousands of children between grades 4 and 7 are invited to read books from the nominated lists of non-fiction and fiction titles and vote for their favourite.
Bailey’s protagonist Eddie, a passionate reader who just happens to be a shiny green bug, saves the school library in this funny, heartwarming tale that fans of Flora & Ulysses and Charlotte’s Web will love.
We’re delighted to congratulate Kyo Maclear whose memoir Birds, Art, Life won the 2018 Trillium Book Award!
A #1 national bestseller, Birds, Art, Life, follows two artists on a yearlong adventure that is at once a meditation on the nature of creativity and a quest for a good and meaningful life.
Karma Brown’s The Life Lucy Knew received a 5/5 rating from The Girly Book Club!
Reviewer Sarah Doherty remarked, “The character that Brown created in Lucy Sparks was so complex and relatable… I even caught myself thinking ‘What if it were me, what if my memories are all false, too?!’”
After hitting her head, Lucy Sparks awakens in the hospital only to discover that the happily-ever-after she remembers in vivid detail—right down to the dress she wore to her wedding—is only one example of what her doctors call a false memory: recollections her mind made up to fill in the blanks from the coma. When the life Lucy believes she had slams against the reality she’s been living for the past four years, she must make a difficult choice about which life she wants to lead, and who she really is.
A warm congratulations to Tanya Talaga whose book Seven Fallen Feathers won the Indigenous Literature Award, part of the First Nation Communities Read 2018-2019 program, in the young adult/adult category.
Using a sweeping narrative focusing on the lives of seven Indigenous high school students who died in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Talaga delves into the history of this small northern city that has come to manifest Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities.
First Nations Communities Read is an annual reading program launched in 2003 by the First Nations public library community in Ontario. Selected titles are chosen with the aim to encourage family literacy, intergenerational storytelling, and intergenerational information sharing, and are written and/or illustrated by, or otherwise involve the participation of a First Nation, Métis, or Inuit creator.
