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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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:

• Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth, published by Orca Book Publishers
• Seven Dead Pirates by Linda Bailey, published by Tundra Books
• The Truth Commission by Susan Juby, published by Razorbill
• We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen, published by Tundra Books

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.

We 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.