Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar

Saturday was an evening of surprises when the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia presented the 2015 East Coast Literary Awards in the small craft gallery at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.

First up was the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award, valued at $2,000. This award has honoured books by Nova Scotians since 1978.

“I’m so surprised,” said winner Kaleigh Trace, author of Hot Wet, & Shaking: How I Learned To Talk About Sex (Invisible Publishing). Trace’s first book is part memoir, part feminist guide, and outlines how she learned to know her body while growing up in a society that offers a very narrow view of what sex is and who gets to enjoy it.

“I feel like choosing a book that is exclusively about sex is really brave. And thank you for reading from it. I was really nervous for you,” she said with a smile to poet John J. Guiney Yallop, who read from the three shortlisted titles, which also included Heather Sparling’s Reeling Roosters & Dancing Ducks: Celtic Mouth Music (Cape Breton University Press) and Graham Steele’s What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise and Collapse of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government (Nimbus Publishing).

Next was the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award, with Justin Kawaja reading from all three shortlisted titles. The award, which is also valued at $2,000, was created by the local writing community two decades ago.

Susan Paddon claimed this year’s prize for her collection Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths (Brick Books). The book-length series of poems is written from the point of view of a devastated and devoted daughter who is obsessively reading the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov, while tending to her dying mother. Also shortlisted for the award were Brian Bartlett for Ringing Here &There: A Nature Calendar (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) and Sylvia D. Hamilton for And I Alone Escaped To Tell You (Gaspereau Press).

The most anticipated of the awards, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award is one 
of Canada’s largest literary prizes at $25,000. The award was established with an endowment by Thomas Head Raddall himself to provide “the gift of time and peace of mind” essential to creative endeavours. Today the award is supported by the Raddall family. Sylvia Gunnery performed a short reading from each shortlisted title.

“I really don’t know what to say. I really didn’t expect this,” said winner Darren Greer, who penned Just Beneath My Skin (Cormorant Books). The book is a gritty, yet beautiful, portrait of a father and son, narrated by both and set in an impoverished rural Nova Scotian community. Greer was up against some heavy hitters in his category: David Adams Richards for Crimes Against My Brother (Doubleday Canada) and Michael Crummey for Sweetland (Doubleday Canada).

 

Awards celebrate a diversity of regional voices in non-fiction, poetry and fiction

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia released the short list for the 2015 East Coast Literary Awards this morning. These three awards celebrate and promote excellence in writing from Atlantic Canada.

The Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, valued at $25,000, is one of  Canada’s largest literary prizes. It was established by Raddall himself and is today supported by his family. It was envisioned to provide “the gift of the and peace of mind” that is key to creating new writing. This year’s short list includes:

• David Adams Richards (NB), Crimes Against My Brother (Doubleday Canada)
• Michael Crummey (NL), Sweetland (Doubleday Canada)
• Darren Greer (NS), Just Beneath My Skin (Cormorant)

The Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award, valued at $2,000, was created in the early 1980s to honour the best non-fiction titles. It’s named for Evelyn Richardson, who in 1945 won the Governor General’s Non-Fiction Award for We Keep A Light, her memoir of life in a family of lighthouse keepers in Shelburne County. This year’s short list includes:

• Heather Sparling (NS), Reeling Roosters & Dancing Ducks: Celtic Mouth Music (Cape Breton University Press)
• Graham Steele (NS), What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise and Collapse of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government (Nimbus Publishing)
• Kaleigh Trace (NS), Hot, Wet, & Shaking: How I Learned To Talk About Sex (Invisible Publishing)

The J.M. Abraham Poetry Award, valued at $2,000, was created by the local writing community two decades ago. This year’s short list includes:

• Brian Bartlett (NS), Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)
• Sylvia D. Hamilton (NS), And I Alone Escaped To Tell You (Gaspereau Press)
• Susan Paddon (NS), Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths (Brick Books)

The awards jurors reviewed 62 submitted titles by writers from all four provinces to select the nine finalists. Each year, the East Coast Literary Awards introduces local, national and international readers to remarkable works written by Atlantic Canadians.

Full details of shortlisted titles and writers will be available tomorrow on the WFNS website, and winners will be announced at the East Coast Literary Awards presentation in Halifax on June 6, following a series of readings celebrating the shortlisted writers.

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia was established in 1976 to provide advice and assistance to writers at all stages of their careers, encourage greater public recognition of writers and their achievements, and enhance the literary arts in our regional and national culture.