Author Michael Crummey is a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for fiction for The Innocents, published by Doubleday Canada.Paul Daly/The Canadian Press
Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey has scored his third nomination for a major Canadian book award this season.
Crummey is a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for fiction for The Innocents, published by Doubleday Canada.
The novel, which centres on two orphans living on an isolated cove in Newfoundland, is also shortlisted for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize and Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
Other contenders for the Governor General’s $25,000 fiction prize include award-winning Winnipeg novelist Joan Thomas for Five Wives (Harper Avenue) and Toronto-based K.D. Miller’s short-story collection Late Breaking (Biblioasis).
Rounding out the short list are Toronto author Cary Fagan for The Student (Freehand Books) and Marianne Micros of Guelph, Ont., for the collection Eye (Guernica Editions).
The awards, which are administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, revealed the titles nominated in seven English-language categories on Wednesday.
The non-fiction contenders are: Dan Werb of Toronto for City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands (Bloomsbury); Alan Walker of Ancaster, Ont., for Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Brian Harvey of Nanaimo, B.C., for Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father (ECW Press); Naomi K. Lewis of Calgary for Tiny Lights for Travellers (University of Alberta Press); and Don Gillmor of Toronto for To the River: Losing My Brother (Random House Canada).
Contending for the poetry prize are: Gwen Benaway of Toronto for Holy Wild (Book*hug); Montreal-born and San Francisco-based Julie Bruck for How to Avoid Huge Ships (Brick Books); Catherine Hunter of Winnipeg for St. Boniface Elegies (Signature Editions); Karen Houle of Guelph, Ont., for The Grand River Watershed: A Folk Ecology (Gaspereau Press); and Armand Garnet Ruffo of Kingston for Treaty # (Buckrider Books).
The finalists in the drama category are: Tetsuro Shigematsu of North Vancouver for 1 Hour Photo (Talonbooks); Amanda Parris of Toronto for Other Side of the Game (Playwrights Canada Press); Kevin Loring of Ottawa for Thanks for Giving (Talonbooks); Sean Harris Oliver of Vancouver for The Fighting Season (Scirocco Drama); and Hannah Moscovitch of Halifax for What a Young Wife Ought to Know (Playwrights Canada Press).
Honours will also be doled out for writing and illustration in children’s literature, as well as French-to-English translation. There are separate French-language categories for francophone writing.
Peer assessment committees chose the 70 finalists from roughly 1,400 titles submitted for consideration.
The awards hand out a total annual prize value of $450,000.
Each winner receives $25,000, while the publisher of each winning book receives $3,000 to support promotional activities. Finalists each receive $1,000.
The winners will be announced on Oct. 29.
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