Sandra Martin is photographed at the Globe and Mail's Toronto studio on September 21, 2010.Andrew Norman/The Globe and Mail
Books by two Globe and Mail reporters are among the 15 titles selected in the first round of competition for the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction, worth $25,000 for the ultimate winner. Sandra Martin's Working the Dead Beat: 50 Lives That Changed Canada joins Jeffrey Simpson's Chronic Condition: Why Canada's Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged Into the 21st Century on the 2013 long list of semi-finalists for the prestigious award. Also competing for the prize is Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper, already honoured with the 2012 Governor-General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Two other finalists for that award appear on the Taylor long list: The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca by Carol Bishop-Gwyn and Noah Richler's What We Talk About When We Talk About War. Modris Eksteins, a refugee from the short list of the 2012 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-Fiction, is represented on the Taylor list by Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age. The biggest surprise on the list comes from the University of Nebraska Press, which published Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaith by Montreal writer Julija Sukys. The winner will be announced March 4.
Geography of Blood shortlisted for B.C. prizeCandace Savage's A Geography of Blood, which last month won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, is among four books shortlisted for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. The shortlist for the B.C. award – worth $40,000 and open to all Canadian non-fiction – also includes Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler's A Season in Hell: My 130 Days In the Sahara With Al Qaeda, B.C. poet George Bowering's memoir Pinboy and Modris Eksteins's Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age, which was shortlisted for the Weston Prize. The jury includes Globe Books editor Martin Levin, former Vancouver Public Library librarian Paul Whitney and publishing vet Jan Whitford. The winner will be announced in February.