Already honoured with the 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, as well as being a nominee for the 2010 Governor-General's Literary Award, Charles Foran's Mordecai: The Life and Times went on to further glory by winning the first-ever award of the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-Fiction at a ceremony in Toronto Tuesday night.
Described as "an epic work of scholarship and energy... well written, exciting to read, even-handed and magisterial" by the jury that chose the winner, Mordecai "delivers an authentic portrait of a writer who could be both tragic and gut-bustingly funny in the same sentence."
Foran, who has written 10 books of fiction and non-fiction, lives in Peterborough, Ont. Other nominees for the inaugural Weston award were Charlotte Gill, Richard Gwyn, Grant Lawrence and Ray Robertson.