B.C. Writers Nominated for Top Non-Fiction Prize

January 10, 2012 - TORONTO – The short list for the prestigious Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction have been announced, and four of the five finalists have B.C. roots.

• Wade Davis, nominated for Into the Silence The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, is the best-selling author of more than a dozen books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow and One River, and is an award-winning anthropologist. He currently holds the post of National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and divides his time between Washington, D.C., and northern British Columbia.
• Charlotte Gill, whose Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe was published by B.C.’s Greystone Books, is the author of the story collection Ladykiller, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and winner of the Danuta Gleed Award and the B.C. Book Prize for fiction. She lives in Vancouver.
• JJ Lee is author The Measure of a Man The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit, is the menswear columnist for the Vancouver Sun and broadcasts a weekly fashion column for CBC Radio in Vancouver. He spent a year as an apprentice at Modernize Tailors and was featured in the award-winning film about the shop, Tailor Made: The Last Tailor Shop in Chinatown. Lee lives in New Westminster, where he works as a creative consultant for a design firm.
• Madeline Sonik, a teacher, writer, and editor, is nominated for Afflictions and Departures, a collection of personal essays published by Vancouver’s Anvil Press. Sonik’s work has been published extensively in journals, magazines, and academic anthologies. She has a MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Education, and currently teaches at the University of Victoria.

Andrew Westoll’s The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery rounds out the list of nominees.

The Charles Taylor Prize recognizes excellence in Canadian non-fiction writing and emphasizes the development of the careers of the authors it celebrates. The prize is awarded annually to the author whose book best combines command of the English language, elegance of style, and subtlety of thought and perception, the prize consists of $25,000 for the winning author and $2,000 for the other arbiters on the shortlist.