Westwood Creative Artists is thrilled to announce that Charles Foran’s best-selling biography Mordecai: The Life & Times (Knopf Canada), was named winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction Tuesday evening, the richest annual literary award for a nonfiction book published in Canada.

Mordecai: The Life & Times won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction earlier this year and is in the running for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction, to be announced Nov. 15.

The Writers’ Trust prize was awarded by the Hon. Hilary M. Weston in Toronto’s Koerner Hall, in the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning.

The jury citation referred to Foran’s book as “an epic work of scholarship and energy … inclusive, intelligent … yet laced with the underlying perfume of tragedy … well written, exciting to read, even-handed, and magisterial.”

Foran is represented at WCA by Jackie Kaiser.

For more information about Charles Foran and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize, please visit:

http://www.charlesforan.com/

http://www.writerstrust.com/Awards/Hilary-Weston-Writers-Trust-Prize.aspx

WCA would like to extend congratulations to Rabindranath Maharaj for winning the Toronto Book Award last night for his novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy (Knopf Canada) .

For more information please visit:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/rabindranath-maharaj-wins-toronto-book-award/article2200509/

WCA is happy to announce that Jack Hodgins’ The Master of Happy Endings (Thomas Allen & Son) has won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Victoria+writer+Jack+Hodgins+honoured/5543064/story.html

WCA is thrilled to announce that Charles Foran, Jonathan Garfinkel and Richard Gwyn have all been shortlisted for 2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards; Garfinkel in the Drama category, Gwyn and Foran in the Non-fiction category. The GGs, Canada’s national book awards celebrate the excellence of Canadian writers, illustrators and translators.

• Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life & Times (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)

• Jonathan Garfinkel, House of Many Tongues
  (Playwrights Canada Press)

• Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867-1891
  (Random House Canada)

For more information please visit:

http://987321654.canadacouncil.net/en/newsandevents-nouvellesetevenements/News%20release%20-%20communique_11oct.aspx

WCA is happy to announce that Romeo Dallaire and Joel Yanofsky have been shortlisted for the Mavis Gallant Prize; Dallaire for They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children (Random House Canada) and Yanofsky for Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism (Penguin Canada).

For more information please visit:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/Quebec+Writers+Federation+announces+2011+finalists/5516074/story.html#ixzz1anp20PWd

Here’s what the jury had to say: “Readers who doubt the modern world is grotesque and hilarious, heart‐stopping and wild, may discover they are delighted with Zsuzsi Gartner’s wonderful collection of stories, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. From the specifications of covetable stereo equipment to the worries of the former terrorist, from the language of IKEA to gardening as warfare, this book shows the short story form at its savage best, each story capturing, with brilliant economy and grace, not only entire worlds but whole mindsets as they explode into eloquence. Gartner is one of the supreme noticers in contemporary fiction, and with this book she has produced a rare work of wisdom and laughter.”

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is Canada’s most distinguished literary prize, awarding $50,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English.

For more information on the prize, please visit:  www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca. For rights inquiries, please contact David Whiteside, david.whiteside@ca.penguingroup.com.



Westwood Creative Artists congratulates Rohinton Mistry on being selected by an international jury representing nine countries, as the 2012 laureate of the $50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, the Neustadt family and the international magazine World Literature Today, The choice was made during deliberations Sept. 29 on the OU Norman campus.

The Neustadt Prize, awarded every two years, is the only international literary award for which poets, playwrights and novelists are given equal consideration. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international prize after the Nobel Prize in Literature and, in fact, is often referred to as the “American Nobel” because of its record of 28 laureates, candidates or jurors who in the past 41 years have been awarded Nobel Prizes following their involvement with the Neustadt Prize. The 22nd Neustadt laureate to win the prize, Mistry will accept the award at OU in fall 2012.

WCA is proud to announce that on Friday, September 16, 2011, His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, named Dr. James Orbinski an Officer of the Order of Canada. The honour was bestowed upon Dr. Orbinski for his contributions as a physician who has worked to improve healthcare access and delivery in developing countries, and as an advocate for those who have been silenced by war, genocide and mass starvation. The Order of Canada was created in 1967, during Canada’s centennial year, to recognize a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.

On Tuesday, the finalists for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction were announced at a ceremony held in Toronto. Included on the shortlist are Charles Foran and Richard Gwynn; Charles Foran for Mordecai: The Life & Times (Knopf Canada) and Richard Gwynn for National Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times; Volume Two: 1867-1891 (Random House Canada).

The winner of the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction will be announced October 25.

WCA is happy to announce that Charlotte Gray and Roy MacGregor have been shortlisted for Ottawa Book Awards; Gray for Gold Diggers: Striking it Rich in the Klondike (Harper Collins) and MacGregor for Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him (Random House Canada).

For more information please visit: http://www.ottawa.ca/rec_culture/arts/awards/book/finalists_en.html