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.

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 22^nd and ending May 13^th.

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 20^th. We appreciate all applications but will only reply to candidates selected for an interview.

WCA is extremely proud to announce that two of our authors, Rohinton Mistry and Erna Paris, have been appointed the Order of Canada. We would like to congratulate both Rohinton and Erna on this incredible honour!

Rideau Hall announced 69 new appointments to the order on Wednesday, December 30, 2015. The recipients have been honoured for “outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.”

A full list of the appointees has been published in the Globe & Mail and can be seen here.

This year has been a wonderful one for WCA. We are so proud of all of our authors, and can’t wait for more to come in 2016!

As we wrap up for the holidays (and do some last minute shopping for gifts), we wanted to share a list of all of the WCA authors whose books have been featured in the many Best-Of lists of 2015!

Globe & Mail Top 100

Wab Kinew The Reason You Walk

Clifford Jackman The Winter Family

Ian Brown Sixty

John Ibbitson Stephen Harper

Susin Nielsen We Are All Made of Molecules

Susan Juby The Truth Commission

Beth Powning A Measure of Light

Lynn Crosbie Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Karma Brown Come Away with Me

CBC Best 75 Books of 2015

Dean Jobb Empire of Deception

Lindsay Mattick Finding Winnie

Ian Brown Sixty

Rosemary Sullivan Stalin’s Daughter

Kyo Maclear The Good Little Book

Pauline Holdstock The Hunter and the Wild Girl

Wab Kinew The Reason You Walk

Susan Juby The Truth Commission

Susin Nielsen We Are All Made of Molecules

Quill & Quire 2015: Notable Books

Wab Kinew The Reason You Walk

Dennis Lee Melvis & Elvis

National Post NP99

Dean Jobb Empire of Deception

Ann Walmsley The Prison Book Club

Wab Kinew The Reason You Walk

Pauline Holdstock The Hunter and the Wild Girl

Lynn Crosbie Where Did You Sleep Last Night

Rosemary Sullivan Stalin’s Daughter

NOW Toronto Best 10 Books of 2015

Elizabeth Hay His Whole Life

The 2016 RBC Taylor Prize Longlist has been announced and WCA would like to congratulate our wonderful authors who made the list, Ian Brown, Wab Kinew, Ann Walmsley, and Rosemary Sullivan.

Ian Brown has been nominated for his memoir, Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?, published by Random House Canada; Wab Kinew for his memoir, The Reason You Walk, published by Viking Canada; Rosemary Sullivan for her biography, Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, published by HarperCollins Canada; and Ann Walmsley for The Prison Book Club, published by Viking Canada. See the rest of the nominees here.

Jurors of the prize, Susanne Boyce, Steven Galloway, and Dr. Stephen J. Toope announced the twelve titles on longlist, stating “These twelve titles stand united in their outstanding literary quality. They represent the best in literary non-fiction published this year.”

WCA is thrilled to announce that Rosemary Sullivan and John Ibbitson are finalists for the BC National Non-Fiction Award, one of the largest non-fiction book prizes in the country.

John Ibbitson is nominated Stephen Harper, and Rosemary Sullivan for Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Congratulations to Rosemary and John!

The finalists were chosen by an independent jury and the winner of the 2016 prize will be announced at a special presentation ceremony in Vancouver on February 4, 2016.

The finalists are described in the following citations from the jury panel:

John Ibbitson for Stephen Harper

“This book describes a contradictory prime minister in a contradictory country, and is narrated with great skill, executed with exacting even-handedness, and founded on detailed research that will tell most readers far more than they already know. Ibbitson describes the Harper we think we know – as mean, and as taking little pleasure in others. Then he tells us what we might not know – that Harper loves to talk to and play with children; that he favoured Israel in part to win the approval of his father, that despite ‘despicable acts’ that included a public scrap with Chief Justice Beverly McLaughlin and cancelling Statistic Canada’s long-form census, he handled the economy well (at least until oil prices plummeted). A more difficult biography to undertake would be hard to imagine, but John Ibbitson, Ottawa columnist for The Globe and Mail, has pulled off the near impossibility of a first rate biography of a man who inspired anger and fear, and whose departure from politics is little mourned.”

Rosemary Sullivan for Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

“This comprehensive biography delivers sharply observed and meticulously researched revelations about Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin. Born in 1921, Svetlana defected from the USSR to the United States in her 40s – leaving her young son and daughter behind – but she was never able to escape her father’s brutal legacy or avoid being used by governments and others in furtherance of their own goals and ideologies. Sullivan draws from many sources, including KGB, CIA, and Soviet archives and Svetlana’s family and friends, to create an intimate portrait of a participant in and victim of some of the greatest geo-political upheavals of the 20th Century. This book provides unique insights, and deeply contributes to our understanding of many significant events of the past century.”

Please join us in congratulating Richard Wagamese on being this year’s recipient of the Writer’s Trust Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life. The Award, which recognizes a lifetime of distinguished work by a Canadian writer, is a resounding acknowledgement of Richard’s dedication to and evolving mastery of his craft over thirty years.

Matt Cohen Selection Committee Citation:

Richard Wagamese is a member of the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He was born near Minaki, Ontario, in 1955, and at the age of five was taken from his family by the Children’s Aid Society – an experience he describes as “baby-snatching” in his first novel, Keeper’n Me, published in 1994. When Richard ran away from his abusive adoptive home, becoming a street child, he became a reader and hence a writer by going into the St. Catharine’s public library. He began his stellar writing career as a columnist for the Calgary Herald – where he became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award. Richard has received numerous awards for his writing; he won the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award for Keeper’n Me; the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, for One Story, One Song; the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction, for Dream Wheels; and Canada Reads’ People’s Choice Poll for Indian Horse in 2012. He has also been awarded two Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees and in 2013 the Molson Prize. Over a career spanning more than 30 years and numerous honours, Richard Wagamese has become a vital voice in Canadian letters.

Banff Awards:

Richard Wagamese has also been awarded the Banff Mountain Fiction and Poetry Prize, as well as the Grand Prize (The Phyllis and Don Mundy Award) at the Banff Mountain Book Competition Awards for his latest novel, MEDICINE WALK.

“Medicine Walk tells an old kind of tale: a pilgrimage to a special place, powerful stories told along the way, the stitching-up of a ravelled relationship between father and son. In this novel the story is distinctively Canadian, yet relevant to so many mountain cultures, as it speaks of a first nations family – diverted and displaced by recent history – who must re-create a deep connection with one another and with home. That home in the Western Canadian mountains is a central character here. Richard Wagamese gives the rivers, the hillsides, the ridges and the valleys a powerful voice in his beautiful, tragic and hopeful story.“

– Harry Vandervlist, 2015 Book Jury