Author Colin McAdam was among the winners of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s annual literary awards, announced on Wednesday, in Toronto. The prize money attached to the awards collectively amounts to C$114,000.
McAdam’s novel A Beautiful Truth (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Canada), a story told from parallel perspectives of chimpanzees and humans, was awarded the C$25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The jury wrote: "In prose both strange and startling, McAdam asks what, if anything, separates the human from the animal; he answers with heartbreaking honesty. This is the kind of book you finish just to pick back up again, if only to figure out how he pulled it off."
Three authors received awards for excellence in a body of work: Newfoundland author Lisa Moore, whose 2010 novel February was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, was awarded the C$25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. Alberta journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, known for his work investigating social and ecological issues, received the $20,000 Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life. And children’s book illustrator and author Barbara Reid won the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People.
The $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize went to Naben Ruthnum for “Cinema Rex,” a short story about three friends transitioning out of boyhood in a 1950s Mauritian community. An additional award for service to the writing community was presented to McClelland & Stewart, in appreciation of its role in creating the Journey Prize 25 years ago.
The Writers’ Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that provides more financial support to Canadian writers than any other non-governmental organization in the country through literary awards, financial grants, scholarships and a writers’ retreat.
