International in scope, The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is one of the most well-regarded fiction prizes in the world. They are awarded each year by the Commonwealth Foundation, and start with regional shortlists, and then regional winners for best book and best first book, followed by the unveiling of the “overall” best book and best first book for all world regions. In addition to £10,000, the recognition, and countless booksales, the overall winner of the Best Book Prize is invited to London to schmooze with Queen Elizabeth II . The award’s mandate is to “encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin.” The ”overall” winner will be announced on April 12th.

“The Heritage and History Book Award for a work of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or children’s/young adult literature that exemplifies excellence in the interpretation of the history and heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador. The award is sponsored by the Historic Sites Association as a way to demonstrate appreciation for those writers whose exploration of their culture and heritage has shaped their writing.”

This Year’s Shortlist (click the book’s title to read more on that book):  Ray Guy’s Ray Guy: The Smallwood Years, Randall Maggs’s Nightwork: The Sawchuk Poems, George A. Rose’s Cod: The Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, and Agnes Walsh’s Going Around with Bachelors.

The award will be presented at the Water Street Book Club on Thursday, April 1, 7:00 p.m., at The Heritage Shop on Water st. 

The Water Street Book Club event on April 1st will feature By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole. Nice event double up, hey?

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*** For A Chance To Win A Copy of Migration Songs: Email your Mailing Address to chad@saltyink.com
or Leave Your Mailing Address as a Comment Below! ***

Free Book Contest Closes March 15th.

Big congrats to Invisible Publishing, top-notch designer by Megan Fildes, and Sydney Smith (artwork)

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As much as I love good book design, we all know you can’t really judge a book by its cover. I thought it was a clever competition title and a fun way to showcase some books, but I’m glad, after a thousand votes, that Migration Songs won this competition, because as the cover suggests: this book is something different, and something good. It’s clear in the opening lines that Anna is an impressive writer, and her debut shows great promise. There is wit, humour, sadness, sincerity, compassion, and humanity in these pages. Most impressively, there is a true originality in her descriptions, they are fresh, informative, and distinctive; there is nothing dull about how she portrays things, and she provides handfuls of laugh-out-loud passages.

And watch this title reveal I believe the designer might have borrowed from:

“For so long, it was my parents’ story that gripped me, overshadowing my own. My life has always been merely a tendril off the vine of theirs, creeping toward the sunshine. It never bothered me to be a sideshow, an afterthought. But something calls to me from the future — a bird sound, like that of geese in flight, faint but insistent — a song of remembering, pushing out feathers I never knew were mine.”

We meet the story’s main character, Joan, as a 29 year old schoolbus-driving cough drop junky who’s cherry-flavoured Halls sooth her more than her shrink can. She’s moved back in with her parents. She’s anxious, lost, and looking for where she belongs.

“I was so nervous the first day when the kids piled in that I downed 3 Halls in 15 minutes, sucking at them until my cheeks ached, and my tongue went numb.” Feeling that the children were “too perishable to be transported in a rickety old bus with maroon vinyl seats by someone of my undependability.”

At its core you might call it a book about identity, a needing to know where you come from, a meditation on belonging. In fact, a good portion of the novel is a literal explanation of how Joan came to be: a 65-page-long retelling of her parents history and courtship “that was, of course, in the first days of their courtship before their hearts became deaf to one another. Before they were like two fish swimming in tanks side by side — they could see one another but, for all intents and purposes inhabited separate oceans.” While the 65-page dip into her parents’ story was arguably the strongest plotline in the novel, the writing really shines when Quon gets to Joan’s story, where she’ll just drop the occasional paragraph-long passage so remarkable that you stop and read it twice to marvel at the writing itself. She cuts characters out well too. “My father is Englishman with the black hair and blue eyes of an Irishman … he’s been in Canada since I was born but he still refuses to sing ‘Oh Canada’ or pledge allegiance to the queen — he’s anti-monarchy.” And “the fact that he even has a study in this day and age is a clue to what kind of man he is. Private. Retiring. Well-read. On special occasions, he smokes a cigar in there and the smooth scent of it creeps out from under the study floor. The aroma of my father’s absence.”

Again, tying into the design of the book, there are some well-worded bird analogies or metaphors woven throughout the whole novel, which allude to their sense of community or rituals that Joan doesn’t have. How she chooses to see and depict birds, at any given moment in the novel – trapped within a tree or flying free – seems to be a reflection of how she feels in that moment. Joan spends a great deal of time in some sort of fond jealousy of birds, in between the cough drop popping.

For a chance to win this story sad-funny story of a cough drop addict looking for her flock: email your mailing address to chad@saltyink.com or leave it as a comment below.

Last night, at the Palais Royale Ballroom in Toronto, Randall Maggs was presented with the $25,000 Kobzar Literary Award for Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems. Night Work has to be one of the most crtically acclaimed and awarded books of Canadian poetry in the last fews years, and is a book about Sawchuck, the charismatic  man, as much as it is a book of “hockey poems.”

Other accolades for Maggs’s Night Work:

- Winner of the 2009 Winterset Award

- Winner of the 2009 E.J. Pratt prize for Poetry

- A Globe and Mail  “Top book of 2008.”

- Randall has read at over 10 esteemed festivals, such as Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writers Festival, WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival, Stephen Leacock Festival, and, Writers at Woody Point.

- “An unlikely a pairing as you will ever see, Newfoundland scribe Randall Maggs skillfully marries hockey and poetry into one of this year’s literary masterpieces.” – Stephen Clare, The Chronicle Herald

Click Here to Read More About This Novel At Her Publisher’s Website.

Click Here to Read Salty Ink’s Featured Book of the Month Article on Come, Thou Tortoise

Joseph Boyden, Priscila Uppal, and Hal Wake are this year’s judges, and the winner, announced in April, will be presented with $7,500, and the other finalists get a $750 gift certificate for Amazon.ca. The Quill & Quire’s Stuart Woods selected the six finalists.

Full Shortlist:
No Place Strange by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden (Key Porter Books)
Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant (Knopf Canada)
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Random House Canada)
Goya’s Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
 Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic (Random House Canada)
Daniel O’Thunder by Ian Weir (Douglas & McIntyre)

Watch the YouTube video below to hear Jessica discussing her truly unique gem of a novel.

If the Winterset award isn’t the most flattering award a Newfoundlander can win, it’s at least a career-affirming pat on the back, not only because the mandate states “the over-riding consideration will be excellence in writing,”  but because all genres are considered. In other words, whoever wins the Winterset award wrote THE best book to come out of Newfoundland & Labrador that year. (as far as the judges are concerned anyway.)

This Year’s Shortlist: Michael Crummey’s Galore, Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise, and Lisa Moore’s February

Synopsis and Selected Praise for Michael Crummey’s Galore

From the publisher’s website: An intricate family saga and love story spanning two centuries, Galore is a portrait of the improbable medieval world that was rural Newfoundland, a place almost too harrowing and extravagant to be real. Propelled by the disputes and alliances, grievances and trade-offs that bind the Sellers and Devine families through generations, Galore is alive with singular characters, and an uncommon insight into the complexities of human nature.

- Shortlisted for the 2009 GG Award.

-  Currently on the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award shortlist.

- Currently on the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award shortlist.

- Currently on the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlist (Canada and Caribbean Region)

- Easily the most critically well-received novel out of Atlantic Canada this year, or, in years?

Synopsis and Selected Praise for Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise

From the publisher’s website: A delightfully offbeat story that features an opinionated tortoise and an IQ-challenged narrator who find themselves in the middle of a life-changing mystery. Audrey (a.k.a. Oddly) Flowers is living quietly in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she finds out her dear father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland. Despite her fear of flying, she goes to him, but not before she reluctantly dumps Winnifred with her unreliable friends. Poor Winnifred.

- A Globe & Mail Book of the Year

- Currently in The National Post’s Canada Also Reads Competition.

- “One of those rare books that manage to entwine humour – in this case, even outright silliness – with poignant insight and a captivating plot.” – Quill & Quire.

And, most importantly: Salty Ink’s Featured Book of the Month for March, click here for that article.

Synopsis and Selected Praise for Lisa Moore’s February

From the publisher’s website: In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine’s Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died. February is the story of Helen O’Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns. It begins in the present-day, but spirals back again and again to the “February” that persists in Helen’s mind and heart.

- Currently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region)

- Named as one of Quill & Quire’s “Fifteen Books That Mattered” in 2009.

- A Globe and Mail Top Book of 2009.

- And most importantly, was Salty Ink’s featured book in February, click here to read that article

* The winner will be announced at Government House Thursday, March 25.

The Atlantic Book Awards — an annual awards conglomerate of 11 awards, ranging from fiction to poetry to children’s to non-fiction to bookseller’s choice — have just revealed their shortlists.

The awards involving fiction and poetry are listed below.

Click a title to read more about that book.

Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award 

This prestigious award is for “the best work of adult fiction published in the previous year by an Atlantic Canadian Writer,” and is awarded by Writers’ Trust of Canada and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Michael Cummey’s Galore, Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man, and Shandi Mitchell’s Under This Unbroken Sky.

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award 

This award is “the best first book of fiction or non-fiction published in the previous year by an Atlantic Canadian author.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Binnie Brennan’s Harbour View, Greg Malone’s You Better Watch Out, and Shandi Mitchell’s Under This Unbroken Sky.

Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing 

Brand new this year, this award ”recognizes an author (or authors) who excels at illuminating the Atlantic region’s vibrant history and acknowledges the work of the publisher who makes the book available.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Raoul R. Anderson and John K. Crellin’s Mi’sel Joe: An Aboriginal Chief’s Journey, Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk’s SS Atlantic: The White Star Line’s First Disaster at Sea, and Mike Heffernan’s Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster.

  Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)

 Awarded to ”the best books published the previous year in celebration of Nova Scotia and its people.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: George Elliott Clarke’s I & I, Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man, and Anna Quon’s Migration Songs.

Atlantic Poetry Prize

Awarded to ”the best work of poetry published in the previous year by an Atlantic Canadian poet.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Anne Compton’s Asking Questions Indoors and Out, Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen’s Lean-To, and Zachariah Wells’ Track & Trace.

Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award 

“A Call For Nominations is sent out to members of the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Association, asking for their top three books. The three most-nominated titles make up the shortlist, which is then sent out to the booksellers to vote on.”

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Michael Crummey’s Galore, Linden MacIntyre’s, The Bishop’s Man, and David Adams Richards’ God Is.

APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award

“The Best Atlantic-Published Book recognizes publishing companies and their hardworking professionals who bring out new books each season. Each year, a publisher whose book possesses the best balance of content, presentation, quality of design and production, as well as contributing the most to an understanding of Atlantic Canada, receives the award.”
 

This year’s shortlist, and big congrats to: Ian Warkentin and Sandy Newton’s Birds of Newfoundland Field Guide, Trudy Morgan-Cole’s By the Rivers of Brooklyn, and David A. Francis and Robert M. Leavitt’s A Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary. 

- After More Than a Thousand Votes and Emails, Here is the Shortlist for Salty Ink’s 2009 Judge A Book By its Cover Competition.

- The Winner to be announced on March 5th, Along With a A Chance to Win a Free Copy of the Winning Novel.

- Click Here to Read All About the Competition and See the Longlist.

Migration Songs by Anon Quon (Invisible Publishing, design by Megan Fildes & art by Sydney Smith)

From the Back Cover: Joan is on the brink. Cough drop addict, school bus driver, mixed race daughter of a Maoist English father and a Chinese-Canadian mother, Joan struggles for meaning after a friend’s death reveals a secret life. Migration Songs is a lost letter from your past, an intimate experience full of humour and grace.

“A strong debut from a new hopeful voice.”
Sue Carter Flinn, The Coast

“An engaging tale, peppered with memorable scenes and lovingly drawn characters.”
- Sarah Steinberg, Quill & Quire

The Factory Voice by Jeanette Lynes (Coteau Books, design by Duncan Campbell)

From the Back Cover: The lives and dreams of four vital, engaging, women revolve around mysterious events at a Fort William military aircraft factory in 1941.  Loyalty and betrayal, love and worthiness, friendship and ambition are the themes which connect the characters in this lively, quirky, fast-paced novel.

- A 2009 Globe and Mail “Book of the Year”

- Longlisted for the 2009 Giller Prize.

Hit and Mrs. by Leslie Crewe (Nimbus Publishing, design by Heather Bryan)

From the Back Cover: Linda, Bette, Gemma, and Augusta are four lifelong friends who live in Montreal. This year they’re all going to turn fifty, so they decide to take a trip to New York together (courtesy of Linda’s philandering husband’s Visa Platinum). But at the LaGuardia airport washroom, Bette accidentally switches bags with a young mother who’s actually smuggling diamonds for the mob, and things start going terribly wrong. When they kill an aggressive cab driver with pepper spray, the four friends know this is not going to be the trip of shopping and Broadway shows they’d expected.

“If you’re in the mood for a cute chick-lit mystery with some nice gals in Montreal, Hit & Mrs. is just the ticket.”
- Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

Leslie Vryenhoek, author of the magnificent collection of short stories, Scrabble Lessons (Salty Ink’s Featured Book of the Month for January 2010) has just won a very prestigious poetry award: the 2010 Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem, and a thousand dollars to boot. Seems it wasn’t enough to blow everyone’s minds with her stellar short fiction debut this fall, she had to show the country she’s a serious poet too.

Judges Eric White and Nora Kelly praised “Letitia’s Cold Footsteps,” for its “nuanced exploration of alienation … [it] takes us into the strangeness of arrival in a new country and makes us shiver … a distinctly Canadian poem.”

Even better news: her prize-winning poem, “Letitia’s Cold Footsteps,” is from a poetry manuscript, dealing with “home and belonging,” that she has recently handed over to her publisher. She’s talented, distinctive, and prolific. What more do you want from a writer. Go buy Scrabble Lessons, go!

International in scope, The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is one of the most well-regarded fiction prizes in the world. They are awarded each year by the Commonwealth Foundation, and start with regional shortlists for best book and best first book, and a cash award for the winners of each catagory, followed by the unveiling of the “overall” best book and best first book (In addition to £10,000, the recognition, and countless booksales, the overall winner of the Best Book Prize is invited to London to schmooze with Queen Elizabeth II) . The award’s mandate is to “encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin.” The Regional winners will be announced in the coming weeks, and the ”overall” winner will be announced on April 12th. 

Lisa Moore & Michael Crummey Make the Six-book Shortlist for “Caribbean and Canada Best Book”

Lisa Moore’s February

- Named as one of Quill & Quire’s “Fifteen Books That Mattered” in 2009.

- A Globe and Mail Top Book of 2009.

- Published, or to be published, in over five countries.

- Click Here to Read Salty Ink’s Feature Article on February

  Michael Crummey’s Galore

- Shortlisted for the 2009 GG Award

  - A National Post/ The Afterword Book of the Year.

- A Globe and Mail Book of the Year.

- Easily one of the best recieved, most talked-about Canadian novels of 2009.

Shandi Mitchell & Carla Gunn Make the Six-book Shortlist for “Caribbean and Canada Best First Book”

 Shandi Mitchel’s Under This Unbroken Sky

- One of Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for 2009 .

- A Selection for the Barnes & Noble First Look Book Club.

- Published, or to be published, in over five countries.

- “A powerhouse of a debut that grips from start to finish.” —Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo

Carla Gunn’s Amphibian

- A National Post / The Afterword Best Book of 2009.

-  One of Globe and Mail’s Top Five Debut Novels of the Year.

- A Quill & Quire Most original Voices of 2009.

- Released to countless rave reviews and critical praise. Literally.

From an astounding 6,000 submissions, three Atlantic Canadians have found themselves on the shortlist for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards

Short Fiction
Roger Moore’s “The Key” (Island View, NB)
Mark Jarman’s “The Troubled English Bride” (Fredericton, NB)

Creative Non-fiction
 Jeff Rose-Martland’s “First Call Resolution” (St. John’s, NL)

No Atlantic Canadians on the poetry shortlist, but we’re just taking a break. Halifax’s Sue Goyette won it last year,

Winners will be announced March 22, 2010.

To quote today’s press release: “The Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers was reeled in this year by David Andrews for his short story collection West Orange.” With a $4,000 prize, an engraved plaque, and $1,000 in editorial services, The Fresh Fish Award has established itself as one of the most lucrative awards in Canada for unpublished, emerging writers. As such, it is one that publishers should take note of. Poets Danielle Devereaux’s The Chrome Chair and Andreae Prozesky’s Sparks, Sparrows were shortlisted for the award.

The award, co-presented by the Literary Arts Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador, was established by Brian O’Dea and funded this year by John and Jan O’Dea. From the judges’ adjudication of David Andrews’ West Orange: “Throughout this short story collection, the reader is struck by the intensity of the present moment, and how specific occurrences in one character’s life resonate both with the participant and those on the periphery … Certain images are rendered with such tenderness and precision that they make the reader stop and reread for the pleasure of it.”

The Governor General’s Literary Awards – AKA “The GGs” - are administered and promoted by The Canada Council for the Arts. Each year they bestow, in French and English, awards in the categories of Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama, Children’s Literature (text), Children’s Literature (illustration) and Translation (both ways). Each award grants the winner a wad of national attention, 25,000 thousand dollars, and a ”specially-bound copy of the winning book.” Moreover, the publisher of each winning book receives $3,000 to support promotional activities. The other finalists receive $1,000 … so if you do the math, this is close to 450,000 thousand dollars worth of literary recognition.

Michael Crummey Shortlisted for English Language Fiction

Official GG adjudication: Michael Crummey’s Galore is a gorgeous and mysterious whale of a book – part multi-generational love story, part riff on the Bible, and part tall tale. Spanning several generations in a remote Newfoundland outport, this story is bursting with fantastical events, colourful characters and delicious dialogue. An unforgettable journey.

Janet Russell and Jirina Marton’s Bella’s Tree win for Children’s Literature – Illustration

 Official GG adjudication: “As with text, illustrations should compel the reader to turn the page to see what happens next. Jirina Marton’s illustrations flow; they bring the reader along and add a warm mood to a cold winter’s day. A spirit captured within the pages of this book is set free by the reading.”

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Telegram publisher Charlie Stacey (left) chats with 2009 Cuffer Prize winner Chad Pelley of St. John's. Pelley won the $2,000 award for his short story "Holes to China."- Photo by Gary Hebbard/The Telegram

“It’s been a thrilling month! I’ve spent a few years behind a computer typing my life away while the rest of the world is out having fun, but for weeks now I’ve been in a constant state of blissful shock about how well my efforts are being receieved,” Pelley says. “My first novel, Away from Everywhere is being received far better than I anticipated. I’m getting emails from perfect strangers being very specific in their kind words, so you know it’s genuine. To win this award on top of that … it’s priceless vindication and encouragement to keep my writing as my main priority.”

The three judges Pelley was so honoured to be recognized by were acclaimed writers  Kathleen Winter, Russell Wangersky, and Joan Sullivan. “it’s funny,” Pelley said. “I finally wrote something I was satisfied with, stylistically, diction-wise, whatever. And look what happened.”

Click here to read the full article in today’s The Telegram

Click here for more info on the Cuffer prize

Click here to read Holes to China on Chad’s personal blog.

Second Place winner, by the way: Jillian Butler’s “The Fairest Season,” and third place went to last year’s first place winner, Josh Pennell, for “Songs my Grandfather Taught Me.” Chad and Josh have agreed to just swap first and third place every year, as Chad won third place last year …

Seems it wasn’t enough to win the Roger’s Cable Non-fiction Award, or the Drummer’s General Award, and then the B.C National Non-fiction Book Award, or be a Globe and Mail  book of the year. Or to be glowingly reviewed in the Globe and Mail, the Quill & Quire, and the National Post, and convincingly endorsed by Lisa Moore, Michael Winter, Ken Harvey …

Wangersky also took the ten-thousand dollar Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction this month.

Coincidentally, I had the pleasure of meeting him tonight. He’s a great man, this is a great book, and Christmas is coming up.

I just plucked this quote off Wilfred Laurier University’s site. It’s more than convincing. “Wangersky’s book offers a crystal-clear portrait of a man who, through his career as a firefighter, becomes addicted to the rush of danger. In a narrative stacked with house fires, car wrecks and various other human tragedies, Wangersky portrays the emotional contingencies and lingering trauma that slowly begin to pull his life apart. This is a powerful book that illuminates the darker natures of those whom we trust with our lives.

Tanis MacDonald, award juror for the Edna Staebler Award, “Burning Down the House is a memoir in the truest definition of the word: a book that explores memory as both a creative and destructive force.”

The Globe & Mail have already declared it a surprise upset (upset is a tad harsh, no?). A surprise it was, but that makes it all the more exciting, right? He acknowledged this himself, declaring it “an accident of consensus,” and went on to gracefully acknowledge the other four finalists, and encourage the world to buy their books. Despite surprising some, the jury were apparently unanimous. According to judge Victoria Glendinning, “The final decision was totally consensual. There was no compromise.”

The jury called his book “a brave novel, conceived and written with impressive delicacy and understanding.”

MacIntyre: “I thought it was time for someone to take a deep look at the impact of sexual abuse on a lot of people, not the least of which are the priests who have to continue to represent this church, in spite of the bad behaviour and deviance of other priests.” He said on stage, as he accepted the award, his main goal in life since twenty was to tell stories. Thanks to the Giller win, his book will be flying off the shelves more than any other this week, likely. Again, The Giller Prize, as mentioned below, is the Canadian book award, as far as media and most are concerned. Sincere Salty Ink congrats to Linden. Go buy his book.

Follow-up: Apperently MacIntyre’s agent, Don Sedgwick, woke up today and there were “literally hundreds and hundreds of e-mails (from) all kinds of publishers who suddenly have to have this book all over the world.” That’s the power of the Giller Prize. “Hundreds” of foreign rights deals. Doesn’t get much better than this.

No other Canadian book award gets the spotlight like the Giller Prize; it is viewed by many as the Canadian book award. It always has a well-rounded, well-regarded jury, but it also offers the largest cash prize of any Canadian book award, and that’s probably why: 50, 000 dollars to the winner, 5,000 to the other four finalists, and, according to The Giller’s website, the prize unquestionably boosts sales.

“Over $60 million dollars in book sales to date have been generated as a direct result of the prize.”

Money aside, it’s about recognition. You get nominated for this award and you’re set, established, vindicated beyond imagination.

About  the book: A deeply wise and moving novel that explores the guilty minds and spiritual evasions of Catholic priests. Father Duncan MacAskill has spent most of his priesthood as the “Exorcist” — an enforcer employed by his bishop to discipline wayward priests and suppress potential scandal. He knows all the devious ways that lonely priests persuade themselves that their needs trump their vows, but he’s about to be sorely tested himself. While sequestered by his bishop in a small rural parish to avoid an impending public controversy, Duncan must confront the consequences of past cover-ups and the suppression of his own human needs. Pushed to the breaking point by loneliness, tragedy and sudden self-knowledge, Duncan discovers how hidden obsessions and guilty secrets either find their way to the light of understanding, or poison any chance we have for love and spiritual peace.

Newfoundland’s Cuffer Prize, now in its second year,  has quickly become one of the most exciting and well-thought-out short fiction contests in Atlantic Canada, awarding not one but three prizes at $2,000, $1,000, and $500. In addition to the contest, Creative Books make an anthology of the top submissions of the year, and, proceeds from this book are donated literacy programs. This makes the Cuffer Prize a unique and fantastic contribution to Newfoundland’s literary scene. Recognition for writers ends in money for charity. How perfect is that?

This Thursday, Novemeber 12th, Creative Books will be launching The Cuffer Prize Anthology, featuring the top 25 submisisons to last year’s competition, and announcing the winners of this year’s prize.

This year’s nominees:

Jillian Butler’s “The Fairest Season”
Gerard Collin’s “Treed” by Gerard Collins, St. John’s
Claire-Marie Grigg’s “Between the Cracks”
Christopher House’s “A Little Bit of Wallpaper”
Samantha Miles’ “Value”
Chad Pelley’s “Holes to China”
Josh Pennell’s “Songs My Grandfather Taught Me”
Judy Tobin’s “How I Know, I Suppose”
Deborah Whelan’s “One For Sorrow”
Paul Whittle’s “The Inland Seas”

(Noteworthy: Gerard Collins, Chad Pelley, Josh Pennell, and Deborah Whelan were featured in last year’s anthology, and now nominated again this year. Just sayin’. )

Known mainly because of its whopping purse of 160,000 $ (CAD), it should also be stressed that this is THE most flattering award to be acknowledged by. It is the largest award of its kind: books from all over the world and in every language are submitted, and, not by their publisher, but by nominations from libraries.

Of the 46 countries represented in this year’s prize, there were twelve Canadian authors, and among them, two Atlantic Canadians: Kenneth J. Harvey, for Blackstrap Hawco, and Anne Simpson, for Falling.

The shortlist will be revealed in April of 2010, and the winner announced in June.

Note: Atlantic Canadian author Alistair MacLeod was the first of two Canadians to have won this award, when No Great Mischief took the prize in 2001.

Click here to buy or read more about Blackstrap Hawco

Click here to buy or read more about Falling

Winners of the 2009 ReLit Award: Lisa Foad (short fiction), Maurice Mierau (poetry), Michael Blouin (fiction), with Kenneth

Founded and spearheaded, without any sponsors, and for no other reason than to help the little guy, Newfoundlandland’s internationally acclaimed author, Kenneth J. Harvey, conceived the ReLit awards in 2000, which theGlobe and Mail has since dubbed, “The country’s pre-eminent literary prize recognizing independent presses.”

The ReLit awards stand apart from all other Canadian literary awards. How?  They honour writers from independent presses, not the ones on big powerhouse publishers. In other words, they shine a light where it needs to be shined, so that readers can hear of a few more fantastic books they otherwise would not have. It shines a light on the writers (and publishers) who need it: the up-and-comers and the hidden gems waiting to be discovered and clawing their way up the literary ladder towards national recognition.

The book world is all about buzz and word of mouth: few people buy a book they’ve never heard of, and independent presses do not have the means or influence of the big leagues to establish their authors and get their names into the national conscience. That does not mean the books aren’t as good (past winners include Lisa Moore, Gil Adamson, and Bill Gatson). So, Harvey’s ReLit awards make a difference; they achieve the real purpose of awards: recognition, not cash prizes. Or, as Harvey says “Ideas, not money.”

More than 250 books were submitted to Harvey this year, from 62 publishers. He takes the time to sift through them all, pick a longlist, and hands them over to a secret jury to choose from there.

“It’s great,” he said in an interview with CBC’s Angela Antle. “I get a good overview of what’s happening in the country … This is a hard, hard business, and I know because I have come up through it. The more people who can have a little attention … it gives their career a little boost, and I get a good overview of the voices coming up.”

Most recently, when the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival asked Harvey to sit on the board, he agreed, so long as the ReLit winners could take part in the prestigious event. A double dose of spotlight. One man making a difference.

This year’s winner for poetry was Maurice Mierau’s Fear Not (Turnstone Press), for short fiction, Lisa Foad’s The Night is a Mouth (Exile Editions), and Michael Blouhin’s Chase and Haven (Coach House). Buy these books!

Also, buy Kenneth’s books. Aside from being such a supportive man to emerging writers, he is a brilliant and prolific writer. Inside is a favourite novel of mine, and so many others, and is the most stylistically innovative novel I have read, and innovative is his thing. The Town That Forgot How to Breathe was one of the only genre-blending ”literary thrillers” that’s ever truly worked for me, and he coined the idea of a “transcomposite narrative” in Skin Hound and Blackstrap Hawco. Prolific, innovative, talented, diverse, and supportive. What more do you want in an author?