Atlantic Canadian authors and publishers were celebrated at the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards gala on Wednesday, June 7, in Paul O’Regan Hall at Halifax Central Library. The recipients of six awards—including the $30,000 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, one of the largest literary awards in the country—were revealed at the evening gala, which was hosted by author and journalist Lindsay Ruck. 

At the top of the night, Dartmouth, NS, author Elaine McCluskey received the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction for Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, published by New Brunswick’s Goose Lane Editions. The award was announced by Alistair MacLeod’s son, Alexander, who on Monday night took home a Nova Scotia Book Award for his collection of short stories, Animal Person. 

Nicola Davison, also a resident of Dartmouth, won the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature for her moving coming-of-age, young adult novel, Decoding Dot Grey, published by Nimbus Publishing of Halifax. The award was presented by Gavin Brimer, the son of the late Ann Connor Brimer, who was an educator and Atlantic Officer for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. 

A feature of the evening was the presentation of the 2023 Atlantic Legacy Award to the Raddall Family of Liverpool, Nova Scotia. The award was established to honour those who have made a lasting contribution to the development of the literary arts in Atlantic Canada and have provided opportunity and inspiration for those sharing Atlantic Canadian stories through writing and publishing. The late Dr. Thomas Raddall, son of CanLit pioneer and bestselling author Thomas Head Raddall (1903–1994), was instrumental in creating the prestigious and generously funded Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize in his father’s honour. Valued at $30,000, “the Raddall” is the largest literary prize in Atlantic Canada and is intended to provide writers “the gift of time and peace of mind.” Three-time Raddall Award recipient Donna Morrissey paid tribute to the family, including Tom Raddall III, who accepted the award on the family’s behalf. The beloved Newfoundland author, who first received the Raddall in 2003 for her novel Downhill Chance, then  in 2006 for Sylvanus Now and 2017 for The Fortunate Brother, was also a finalist for the award in 2000 and in 2013. Morrissey, a longtime resident of Halifax, delighted the audience with her trademark humour.   

This year’s recipient of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award is Halifax author K. R. Byggdin, for their first novel, Wonder World (Enfield & Wizenty), a refreshing coming-of-age story that challenges stereotypes of rural life. Of the book, the Raddall jury said, “As funny and sassy as it is poignant and observant, Wonder World is a virtuoso exploration of love and hope, a story of building bridges to family and community while staying true to oneself.”  

After the announcements of the winners of the J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award (Nanci Lee, for Hsin, published by Brick Books) and the Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing (Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis, for The Solidarity Encounter: Women, Activism and Creating Non-Colonizing Relations, published by UBC Press) came the presentation of the APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award, which goes to an Atlantic Canadian publisher whose book best exemplifies excellence and achievement in publishing. The 2023 award went to New Brunswick’s Goose Lane Editions with The Beaverbrook Art Gallery for Wabanaki Modern / Wabanaki Kiskukewey / Wabanaki Moderne by Emma Hassencahl-Perley and John Leroux. The production values of this timely retrospective truly impressed the jury, who felt it was not only beautiful, but of historic and cultural significance and a crucial contribution to the Canadian identity. 

The 2023 Atlantic Book Awards were presented by last year’s award winners, including Michelle Butler Hallet, David Huebert, Chad Lucas, and Alyda Faber, with some authors joining live and in-person and others via video. Attendees also enjoyed listening to excerpts of each of the winning titles, read by representatives of the close-knit literary community, including one of the two new Halifax Youth Poet Laureates, fifteen-year-old Damini Awoyiga. A live stream of the awards show allowed viewers to enjoy the ceremony online; it is available for viewing online.

The winners of the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards are:

Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction

Elaine McCluskey, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes (Goose Lane Editions)

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature
Nicola Davison, Decoding Dot Grey (Nimbus Publishing)

APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book
Goose Lane Editions with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Wabanaki Modern / Wabanaki Kiskukewey / Wabanaki Moderne by Emma Hassencahl-Perley & John Leroux 

Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis, The Solidarity Encounter: Women, Activism and Creating Non-Colonizing Relations (UBC Press) 

J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award 

Nanci Lee, Hsin (Brick Books)

Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
K. R. Byggdin, Wonder World (Enfield & Wizenty) 

Wednesday, June 7, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.

Join us online for the Atlantic Book Awards Gala! The ceremony will be hosted by author and journalist Lindsay Ruck (Amazing Black Atlantic Canadians). Six book awards, including one of Canada’s biggest book prizes, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, valued at $30,000, will be presented, along with this year’s Atlantic Legacy Award, honouring those who have made an extraordinary contribution to the advancement and encouragement of the literary arts in Atlantic Canada.

Five Nova Scotian authors win literary awards

Activists Sister Dorothy Moore and El Jones were among the five Nova Scotia writers recognized with Nova Scotia Book Awards at a ceremony held Monday evening at Brightwood Golf and Country Club in Dartmouth. Best-selling author Charlene Carr, who lives in Dartmouth, was the host. 

Mi’kmaw Elder Sister Dorothy Moore was presented with the George Borden Writing for Change Award for A Journey of Love and Hope (Nimbus Publishing), a collection of talks, presentations, prayers, and ceremonies by the human rights activist. Named for the late George Borden (1935–2020), the Writing for Change Award is for an outstanding non-fiction book by a Nova Scotian author that inspires others and challenges the status quo. 

Poet, professor, and activist El Jones took home the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award for Abolitionist Intimacies (Fernwood Publishing). In this book, Jones employs both poetry and prose to examine the movement to abolish prisons. From the jury citation: “El Jones packs meaning into every word and phrase, intertwined with unwavering undertones of cultural genocide, Black annihilation, and the institutionalized trauma that continues to smother and suppress a people and their intimate and necessary cultural connections.”

The first award of the evening, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award (Non-Fiction), went to Yarmouth native Mandy Rennehan for The Blue Collar CEO: My Gutsy Journey from Rookie Contractor to Multi-Millionaire Construction Boss (HarperCollins). The book is the “respectfully uncensored” story of how Rennehan’s business savvy and innovative thinking led her to the top of the male-dominated construction industry before she turned thirty. 

Sylvia D. Hamilton won the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award for her poetry collection Tender (Gaspereau Press). The book chronicles the experiences of Black people, Black women in particular, in their desire to live full, complex, unencumbered lives. According to the jury: “Tender is bursting at the seams with love, compassion, and vulnerability.”

Alexander MacLeod received the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction for Animal Person (McClelland and Stewart), a short fiction collection exploring love, compromise, and the idea of self. “Lagomorph,” one of eight short stories in this collection, previously won the prestigious O. Henry Award and the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia’s Masterworks Art Award. 

This is the second year for the Nova Scotia Book Awards. Until last year, Nova Scotia didn’t have its own provincial literary awards celebration, as all the book awards for Nova Scotia authors were presented as part of the Atlantic Book Awards.

Literary events continue this week, culminating with the Atlantic Book Awards Gala on Wednesday, June 7, at 7:00 p.m. at Paul O’Regan Hall, Halifax Central Library. For tickets, click here.

The Nova Scotia Book Awards is a partnership between the Dartmouth Books Awards Committee and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, with support from the Atlantic Book Awards Society. The Society for the Nova Scotia Book Awards is grateful for generous funding from Nova Scotia Gaming Support4Culture and the University of King’s College.

Here is the full list of winners, in the order presented:  

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award (Non-Fiction)

Mandy Rennehan, The Blue Collar CEO (HarperCollins)

Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award
Sylvia D. Hamilton, Tender (Gaspereau Press)

George Borden Writing for Change Award

Elder Sister Dorothy Moore, A Journey of Love and Hope (Nimbus Publishing)

Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)

Alexander MacLeod, Animal Person (McClelland & Stewart)

Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award

El Jones, Abolitionist Intimacies (Fernwood Publishing)

The 2023 Atlantic Book Awards Festival, featuring a variety of events with this year’s shortlisted authors and publishers, will run June 1–7 2023. We hope you can join us to celebrate with this year’s nominees. Click here to view the schedule of events!

Wednesday, June 7 at 7:00 p.m. (Doors open at 6:30 p.m.) 

Atlantic Book Awards Gala Paul O’Regan Hall,  Halifax Central Library
The culmination of the Atlantic Book Awards Festival is the Atlantic Book Awards Gala. Six book awards, including one of Canada’s biggest book prizes, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, valued at $30,000, will be presented. Live music, light refreshments, cash bar, and special guest authors will be in attendance. The ceremony will be hosted by author and journalist Lindsay Ruck (Amazing Black Atlantic Canadians). Nominated books will be available for sale from Bookmark Halifax. This is a ticketed event. Tickets are $20: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/atlantic-book-awards-tickets-609529317597
The awards ceremony will also be live-streamed so book lovers across the region and beyond can join in the celebration. Find the live steam at www.atlanticbookawards.ca.

Hold onto your hats, book lovers, the Atlantic Book Awards are back, showcasing the finest in Atlantic Canadian writing and publishing. 

The books shortlisted for the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards are a testament to the incredible diversity and richness of Atlantic Canadian literature, with everything from poetry to scholarly writing, books for young adults, short stories, adult fiction, and three titles in contention to be named the best Atlantic-published book. 

The winners of the six Atlantic Book Awards will be revealed at the Atlantic Book Awards Gala at Halifax Central Library on Wednesday, June 7. Here are the nominees: 

Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction

Meghan Rose Allen, The Summer the School Burned Down (Indie-published)
Bridget Canning, No One Knows About Us (Breakwater Books)
Elaine McCluskey, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes (Goose Lane Editions)

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature 

Nicola Davison, Decoding Dot Grey (Nimbus Publishing)
Vicki Grant, Tell Me When You Feel Something (Penguin Random House)
Jo Treggiari, Heartbreak Homes (Nimbus Publishing)

APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award

Goose Lane Editions with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Wabanaki Modern / Wabanaki Kiskukewey / Wabanaki Moderne by Emma Hassencahl-Perley & John Leroux 
Flanker Press, Operation Masonic by Helen C. Escott
Boulder Books, Food, Culture, Place: Stories, Traditions, and Recipes of Newfoundland by Lori McCarthy and Marsha Tulk

Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing

Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis, The Solidarity Encounter: Women, Activism, and Creating Non-Colonizing Relations (UBC Press) 
Mark David Turner, Inuit TakugatsaliuKatiget / On Inuit Cinema (Memorial University Press)
Elizabeth Yeoman, Exactly What I Said: Translating Words and Worlds (University of Manitoba Press)

J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award 

Luke Hathaway, The Affirmations (Biblioasis)
Nanci Lee, Hsin (Brick Books) 
Annick MacAskill, Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press)

Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

K. R. Byggdin, Wonder World (Enfield & Wizenty) 
Bobbi French, The Good Women of Safe Harbour (HarperCollins) 
Lisa Moore, This Is How We Love (House of Anansi) 

Nine of the eighteen nominations are for books published by Atlantic publishers. New Brunswick’s Goose Lane Editions and Nova Scotia’s Nimbus Publishing have two nominations each. Other regional publishers are Breakwater Books, Boulder Books, and Flanker Press, all based in Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Press.

Nominee Meghan Rose Allen (The Summer the School Burned Down) is also nominated for a New Brunswick Book Award. The winners of the NBBAs will be revealed at an awards ceremony at Lily Lake Pavillion in Saint John on Saturday, June 3. 

Nominees Bobbi French (The Good Women of Safe Harbour), Nanci Lee (Hsin), and Jo Treggiari (Heartbreak Homes) are all also nominated for Nova Scotia Book Awards. Winners of the NSBAs will be revealed at a gala ceremony at Brightwood Golf & Country Club in Dartmouth on Monday, June 5. 

The Nova Scotia Book Awards and the New Brunswick Book Awards take place during the Atlantic Book Festival, along with a range of online and in-person events featuring authors shortlisted for awards in the week leading up to the Atlantic Book Awards Gala.

On Wednesday, June 7, the six Atlantic book awards, including one of Canada’s biggest book prizes, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award valued at $30,000, will be presented along with the Atlantic Legacy Award, honouring an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the advancement and encouragement of the literary arts in Atlantic Canada.

The 2023 Atlantic Book Awards Gala takes place at Paul O’Regan Hall in Halifax Central Library at 7:00 p.m. and will be hosted by journalist, author, and editor Lindsay Ruck (Amazing Black Atlantic Canadians). Tickets ($20) are available online now: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/atlantic-book-awards-tickets-609529317597

The awards ceremony will also be live-streamed so book lovers across the region and beyond can join in the celebration. 

The Atlantic Book Awards Society extends a big congratulations to this year’s nominees. Visit www.atlanticbookawards.ca and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where you can stay up-to-date on the Atlantic Book Awards Festival events. 

Thirteen Nova Scotian authors are in the running for the five Nova Scotia Book Awards being handed out this year. The winners of the awards, covering poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, will be revealed at a gala ceremony at Brightwood Golf & Country Club on Monday, June 5. This is the second year for the Nova Scotia Book Awards, which bring together all the book awards that are open only to authors who were born in or reside in Nova Scotia. These include the Dartmouth Book Awards and awards administered by the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. Here is this year’s slate of awards and the three titles shortlisted for each:

Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
Bobbi French, The Good Women of Safe Harbour (HarperCollins)
Alexander MacLeod, Animal Person (McClelland & Stewart)
Jo Treggiari, Heartbreak Homes (Nimbus Publishing)

Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award
Kate Beaton, Ducks (Drawn & Quarterly)
El Jones, Abolitionist Intimacies (Fernwood Publishing)
Kim Pittaway & Toufah Jallow, Toufah: The Woman Who Inspired an African #MeToo Movement (Penguin Random House)

George Borden Writing for Change Award
El Jones, Abolitionist Intimacies (Fernwood Publishing)
Elder Sister Dorothy Moore, A Journey of Love and Hope (Nimbus Publishing)
Wanda Thomas Bernard, A Child of East Preston (Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Nonfiction
Kate Beaton, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (Drawn & Quarterly)
Martha Paynter, Abolition to Abortion (Fernwood Publishing)
Mandy Rennehan, The Blue Collar CEO (HarperCollins)

Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award
Sylvia D. Hamilton, Tender (Gaspereau Press)
Sue Goyette, Monoculture (Gaspereau Press)
Nanci Lee, Hsin (Brick Books)

Two authors are double nominees: Halifax activist, journalist, and poet El Jones for her book Abolitionist Intimacies, and Cape Breton’s Kate Beaton, whose nominated title, Ducks, won Canada Reads last week.

The 2023 Nova Scotia Book Awards gala will be hosted by Dartmouth author Charlene Carr, whose latest novel, Hold My Girl, was named by the Globe and Mail as one of “The top 30 Canadian books to read in 2023” and has been released internationally. Carr says, “I’m incredibly pleased to host this year’s event, which celebrates a fantastic and diverse group of Nova Scotian writers and books.”

The gala will be held June 5 at Brightwood Golf & Country Club in Dartmouth; tickets are $10 and are available now through Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-nova-scotia-book-awards-tickets-589815262327.

The Nova Scotia Book Awards gala is part of the Atlantic Book Awards Festival, running the first week of June.

We’re pleased to announce that Submissions for the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards and Nova Scotia Book Awards are open.

This includes: 

Atlantic Book Awards

• Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction 
• Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature 
• Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing 
• Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Best Atlantic-Published Book Award 
• J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award 
• Senator Don Oliver Young Black Voices Book Prize (new this year!)
• Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award 

Nova Scotia Book Awards 

• Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction 
• Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award 
• George Borden Writing for Change Award 
• Margaret and John Savage First Book Awards (fiction and nonfiction)
• Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award   

Please see our awards section for submission guidelines and criteria for each award. Be sure to check the eligibility requirements for each award as they vary from prize to prize. 

The submission deadline is November 1, 2022.
(With the exception of the APMA Best-Atlantic Published Book Award for which the deadline is November 30, 2022.) 

 See more at https://atlanticbookawards.ca/awards/

The Atlantic Book Awards are administered by the Atlantic Book Awards Society, the Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association, and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia Book Awards are administered by the Dartmouth Book Awards and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. 

Michelle Butler Hallett is the recipient of the 2022 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for her book Constant Nobody, which was published by Goose Lane Editions in March 2021.

Michelle Butler Hallett, she/her, is a history nerd and disabled person who writes fiction about violence, evil, love, and grace. The Toronto Star describes her work as “perfectly paced and gracefully wrought,” while Quill and Quire calls it “complex, lyrical, and with a profound sense of a world long passed.” Her short stories are widely anthologized in Hard Ol’ Spot, The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, Everything Is So Political, Running the Whale’s Back, and Best American Mystery Stories, and her essay “You’re Not ‘Disabled’ Disabled” appears in Land of Many Shores. Her most recent novel, This Marlowe, was longlisted for the ReLit Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. Her first novel, Double-blind, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. Butler Hallett lives in St. John’s. Constant Nobody is her fifth novel.

In Constant Nobody, the time is 1937. The place: the Basque Country, embroiled in the Spanish Civil War. Polyglot and British intelligence agent Temerity West encounters Kostya Nikto, a Soviet secret police agent. Kostya has been dispatched to assassinate a doctor as part of the suppression of a rogue communist faction. When Kostya finds his victim in the company of Temerity, she expects Kostya to execute her — instead, he spares her. Several weeks later, Temerity is reassigned to Moscow. When she is arrested by the secret police, she once again encounters Kostya. His judgement impaired by pain, morphine, and alcohol, he extricates her from a dangerous situation and takes her to his flat. In the morning, they both awaken to the realities of what Kostya has done. Although Kostya wants to keep Temerity safe, the cost will be high. And Temerity must decide where her loyalties lie. Writing about violence with an unusual grace, Michelle Butler Hallett tells a story of complicity, love, tyranny, and identity. Constant Nobody is a thrilling novel that asks how far an individual will go to protect another — whether out of love or fear.

About Constant Nobody, the jury had this to say:

“The writing is fresh, skillful, and utterly compelling; the flawed protagonists are gradually and carefully revealed with sensitivity and depth; the times are harrowing. What we learn about their actions will haunt, confuse, and often sicken—laying bare the damages war causes on all sides. Constant Nobody is a powerful book in which both profound inhumanity and unlikely tenderness are real and believable. It’s a novel for our times, shockingly reverberating right up to the present.”

Original photography by Nicola Davison.

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Mireille is curator of contemporary art at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John’s. Prior to this, she was curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Eagan has lectured nationally on Canadian art and has published several catalogues and essays on Canadian artists. She has a special interest in promoting the activities of artists based in the Atlantic provinces.

Goose Lane Editions is based in Fredericton, New Brunswick’s capital and is a vital part of Canada’s ever-morphing publishing landscape. Whether it’s homegrown Canadian fiction, singular collections of poetry, books on contemporary art, or courageous stances on environmental issues and global politics, we provide book lovers with great reads that inspire, spur conversation, and stimulate minds. The publisher seeks to represent a balance of voices and proudly embrace Queer Lit as well as First Nations and Inuit authors and artists who are shaping and transforming our perspectives. Goose Lane Editions will continue to embrace diversity, fresh voices and novel perspectives. They will keep on sharing stories that challenge, startle, and enlighten — and enhance our ability to be surprised and to be inspired.

In Future Possible, Mireille Eagan and other writers and artists navigate the tangled histories and cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador to investigate the visual output and to write the narrative that it has created. The result is an ambitious volume, arising from a two-part exhibition of the same name at The Rooms, that provides a multi-vocal, multi-faceted history spanning pre- and post-Confederation Newfoundland. Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of original works and installation views, Future Possible features essays by curators and artists on topics such as pre-Confederation art; contemporary art, craft, and Indigenous culture; and outsider and folk art. This intriguing volume places artifacts from the province’s history and work by iconic Newfoundland and Labrador artists such as Gerald Squires and Mary Pratt in conversation with works by contemporary artists like Jordan Bennett and Kym Greeley. Together they explore how history is told and retold through objects and images and how these objects and images, and the power structures that preserve them, define an understanding of place. Contributions from Mireille Eagan, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Andy Jones, Heather Igloliorte, Jeff Webb, Darryn Doull, Bushra Junaid, Cory Thorne, Kelley Totten, Patricia Grattan, Gerard Curtis, Caroline Stone, Craig Francis Power, Christopher Pratt, Logan MacDonald, Lisa Moore, Eva Crocker, Andria Hickey, and a foreword by Anne Chafe.

About Future Possible: An Art History of Newfoundland and Labrador, the jury said:

“How can one not be seduced by the spectacular expedition through the visual arts of Newfoundland and Labrador that Future Possible  proposes? This work of exceptional graphic quality reveals a rich and astonishing artistic panorama of this territory, so vast and so diverse in its communities. The fruitful collaboration between Goose Lane Editions and The Rooms Art Gallery has obviously propelled the marketing of this book which has found its audience very well.”

Original photography by Nicola Davison.

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