One of the biggest selling Canadian novels in history, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, will have its movie debut at the New York Film Festival on September 28th.
Life of Pi stars newcomer Suraj Sharma as Pi Patel, a teenager who is stranded on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger following the sinking of a ship carrying zoo animals.
Martel’s novel, published in 2001, won the 2002 Man Booker Prize.
WCA is thrilled to announce that Roy MacGregor has won the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award, as this year’s print media honoree by the Hockey Hall of Fame. MacGregor was recognized for his graceful, eloquent storytelling over a career that has seen his writing appear in a long list of newspapers and magazines, including The Globe & Mail, the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Star and Maclean’s magazine, and in many books, on topics from hockey to the mysterious death of artist Tom Thomson.
Acclaimed Canadian author Erna Paris is the 2012 recipient of the WFM – Canada World Peace Award.
The award, to be presented July 12 in Winnipeg, recognizes an outstanding Canadian whose work advances awareness and action in support of a more peaceful future for humanity.
Paris (www.ernaparis.com) is the author of seven books and the winner of ten national and international prizes.
The World Federalist Movement – Canada (www.worldfederalistscanada.org) is a longstanding Canadian NGO dedicated to reforming global institutions and strengthening the rule of law in world affairs.
The World Peace Award has been presented annually or every second year since 1972. There have been 31 previous recipients, including most recently, Lloyd Axworthy, Louise Arbour, Philippe Kirsch, Roméo Dallaire, Ernie Regehr, Gerry Barr and Flora MacDonald.
WCA is thrilled to announce that Ian Hamilton’s The Water Rat of Wanchai has won the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
The Crime Writers of Canada’s citation of the novel follows:
Ian Hamilton’s The Water Rat of Wanchai is a smart, action-packed thriller of the first order, and Ava Lee, a gay Asian-Canadian forensics accountant with a razor-sharp mind and highly developed martial arts skills, is a protagonist to be reckoned with. We were impressed by Hamilton’s tight plotting; his well-rendered settings, from the glitz of Bangkok to the grit of Guyana; and his ability to portray a wide range of sharply individualized characters in clean but sophisticated prose.
For more information, please visit:
http://crimewriterscanada.com/awards/arthur-ellis-awards/current-contest/winners
Sara O’Leary has just won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize at the 2012 BC Book Prize Gala for When I Was Small (Simply Read Books).
For more information, please visit:
http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/winners/2012
Conrad Black’s A Matter of Principle, published by McClelland & Stewart, has been named a finalist for the 2012 National Business Book Awards.
In the book, Black offers a candid memoir of his indictment and trial, along with a critical account of what he perceives to be flawed in the U.S. justice system. The book offers an insider’s glimpse at this high-profile case from Black’s perspective.
For more information please visit:
WCA is thrilled to announce that Richard Gwyn’s bestselling biography of Sir John A. Macdonald has won the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing at a ceremony in Ottawa on Wednesday night.
Nation Maker is “a fully rounded and compelling portrait of our first prime minister’s public and private life,” according to the Cohen prize citation. “Gwyn shows how Macdonald built a nation out of a reluctant union of impoverished colonies, and shaped the Canada we know today.”
For more information, please visit:
http://www.writerstrust.com/Awards/Shaughnessy-Cohen-Prize-for-Political-Writing.aspx
Riel Nason’s debut novel The Town That Drowned has been declared a finalist for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize. Since its release in the Fall of 2011, The Town That Drowned has been a critical and commercial hit. Riel’s novel has also been nominated for the Atlantic Book Publishers Association’s Margaret and John Savage First Book Award and the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award.
Regional winners will be announced May 24, and the overall winner will be announced at the Hay Festival, Wales in the UK, on Friday, June 8.
WCA is happy to announce that I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish, has just won a Christopher Award. The ceremony will be held in New York on May 24. For more information, please visit: www.christophers.org
