First the talk shows, then the tell-all memoir, naming names. Ok, ok, I have to run around Hollywood, the bimbos, Rodeo Drive, the drunken escapades, crash a car or two, get in the papers. Pick a fight with Jason Priestly at a hockey game. Hog the spotlight from Paris Hilton, spray paint here fake fur and scream anti stem-cell slogans at her. Get a few scripts stolen on fraudulent development deals. Sue Paramount. Sue my mother. Sue the mayor of LA for not putting teaching the barrio kids English so I can understand their graffiti and stay on the right side of turf wars when I go to my drug dealer in east LA. Meet the premier of Canada, what's his name, in a photo op, and tell people if they had American politicians like him there would be peace in our time.. because the army would be 15 stoned guys in a volkswagen bus and Gulf and Western would be making plastic models of F-15's.
I will never eat lunch in that town again.
What's the name of that Canadian literary award they give to authors nobody has heard of? The Gremlin? The Booby Prize?
-- oh the Wookier Prize! that's it... awarded for creation of the best screen animal which can talk. Was once Bug's Bunny's exclusive purview.
What are the CDN literary awards.. are you ready for this? Sitting down? grab a coffee, no put on a pot of green tea..
# Georges Bugnet Award for Novel.
# Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction.
# Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.
# Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama.
# Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction.
# Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book and others.
Arthur Ellis Award
The Arthur Ellis Awards, named after the nom de travail of Canada’s official hangman. Awards are presented in six categories for works in the crime genre published for the first time in the previous year by authors living in Canada, regardless of their nationality, or by Canadian writers living outside of Canada.
BC Book Prize
The B. C. Book Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia writers and publishers. The Prizes are administered and awarded by members of a non-profit society who represent all facets of the publishing and writing community. The B. C. Book Prizes include the following prizes:
# Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
# Haig-Brown Regional Prize
# Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
# Bill Duthie Bookseller's Choice
# Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
# Sheila Egoff Children's Prize
# and Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize.
Booker Prize
While the Booker Prize is not a Canadian literary award per se, Canadian works often figure prominently on the Booker shortlist.
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction represents the very best of contemporary fiction. One of the world's most distinctive awards, and one of incomparable influence, it continues to be the pinnacle for every fiction writer. Established by Booker plc in 1968, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide audience and a dramatic increase in book sales.
Canadian Authors Association Awards
The CAA Awards for Poetry and Drama (for any medium) were funded by Harlequin Enterprises of Toronto from 1975 to 1997. In 1998, they were funded by a member of the CAA who chooses to remain anonymous.
Throughout their existence, these CAA Awards for Adult Literature have been designed as objective rewards for excellence. Judging is carried out by panels selected in confidence. No short lists are published. The Journal (CBC) has referred to them as "The major awards given annually by authors to authors."
These awards include the following:
Jack Chalmers Poetry Award
Jubilee Award for Drama
Jubilee Award for Short Stories
Lela Common Award for Canadian History
Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography
Carol Bolt Award for Plays and others.
Canadian Literary Award
The Canadian Literary Awards were created in 1979 by writer and broadcaster Robert Weaver. This year(2002), the awards have formed a new partnership with Air Canada's enRoute magazine and The Canada Council for the Arts to seek out and promote new Canadian writers. In addition, this is the first time the French and English networks have combined their literary awards in a major commitment to talent development in both languages.
Past winners of the Award represent a who's who of Canadian authors. Recipients have included Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields, Barry Callaghan, Bonnie Burnard, Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Susan Musgrave and Shauna Singh Baldwin.
Charles Taylor Literary Non-Fiction Prize
The Charles Taylor Prize commemorates Charles Taylor's pursuit of excellence in the field of literary non-fiction. The Prize will be awarded to the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception.
The Prize consists of $25,000 for the winning author as well as promotional support to help all shortlisted books stand out in the national media, bookstores, and libraries.
Commonwealth Writers Prize
To encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin, the Commonwealth Foundation established the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1987. Past winners of the prize include JM Coetzee, Louis de Bernieres and Peter Carey.
Dartmouth Book Awards
The Dartmouth Book Awards honour Nova Scotian literature and recognize the valuable contribution writers make to our cultural heritage. Two prizes of $1200 each are awarded - one for fiction and one for non-fiction.
The Dartmouth Book and Writing Awards were established in 1989 by the mayor of Dartmouth, Dr. John P. Savage, with the financial support of corporations interested in the province's artistic life. The intent was to honour Nova Scotian fiction and non-fiction by Canadian authors. In 2000, the student writing awards were replaced by the Cunard First Book prize, an award that recognizes a first published book. The awards are administered by a steering committee composed of representatives from the Halifax Regional Library, the Halifax Regional Municipality and members of the community. Since 1997, the Dartmouth Book Award for fiction has been sponsored by Jarislowsky-Fraser and the non- fiction award has been sponsored by Knight, Bain, Seath and Holbrook.
Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award
This award is administered through the Ontario Arts Council Foundation. It was first established by the Chalmers family in 1972 to honour the talent and achievement of Canadians in the Arts. In 2001 the Chalmers Awards were discontinued.
Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is given in the memory of Gerald Lampert, an arts administrator who organized authors' tours and took a particular interest in the work of new writers. The award recognizes the best first book of poetry published by a Canadian in the preceding year. The Award carries a prize of $1,000 and is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets. It is presented each year at the League's Annual General Meeting in May or June, with the shortlist announced in April.
Giller Prize
The largest annual prize for fiction in the country, The Scotiabank Giller Prize awards $40,000 each year to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English and $2,500 to each of the finalists. Named in the honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller by her husband Jack Rabinovitch, The Giller Prize was established to recognize excellence in Canadian fiction.
For a complete list of winners and nominees, check out our Giller Awards page.
Governor General's Award
In 1937, Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir (John Buchan, author of The 39 Steps) awarded the first Governor General's Literary Awards to honour the best books of 1936. Since then, the prizes have evolved into Canada's pre-eminent national literary awards. Launched by the Canadian Authors' Association, the awards were at first non-monetary prizes awarded for the best works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama written in English or translated from French into English...
The Canada CouncilThe Canada Council for the Arts assumed responsibility for funding, adjudicating and administering the awards in 1959, and at the same time added prizes for works written in French. In 1981, there were eight separate prizes for the best works in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama - four in each language. In 1987, the Canada Council Prizes for Children's Literature (text and illustration) and Translation were made Governor General's Literary Awards.
Visit our comprehensive list of winners and jury comments on our Governor General's Award site.
Griffin Trust Prize for Poetry
The Griffin Trust was created to serve and encourage excellence in poetry written in English anywhere in the world. The Griffin Trust is a Canadian initiative founded in April, 2000 by Scott Griffin, its Chairman, with Trustees Margaret Atwood, Robert Hass, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson and David Young. The purpose of The Griffin Trust is to raise public awareness of the crucial role poetry must play in society's cultural life.
The Griffin Trust’s support for poets, for poetry, and for the publishers of poetry will include two annual literary prizes worth $40,000 each. These prizes will be awarded annually for collections of poetry published in English during the preceding year. One prize will go to a living Canadian poet, the other to a living poet from any other country, which may include Canada. Qualified judges will be selected annually by the Trustees and the prizes will be awarded in the spring of each year.
Journey Prize
The $10,000 Journey Prize is awarded annually to a new and developing writer of distinction for a short story published in a Canadian literary publication. This award is made possible by James A. Michener's generous donation of his Canadian royalties earnings from his novel Journey, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1988. The Journey Prize itself is the most significant monetary award given in Canada to a writer at the beginning of his or her career for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work in progress.
The winner of the Journey Prize is selected from among the stories that appear in the current volume of The Journey Prize Anthology, published annually in September by McClelland & Stewart.
For over a decade, The Journey Prize Anthology has established itself as one of the most prestigious anthologies in the country, introducing readers to the best new Canadian writers from coast to coast. It has become a who's who of up-and-coming writers, and many of the authors whose early work has appeared in the anthology have gone on to distinguish themselves with acclaimed collections of stories or novels, and have been shortlisted or have won the country's top literary awards, including the Governor General's Award, the Trillium Award, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and The Giller Prize.
Kiriyama Prize
The Kiriyama Prize was established in 1996 to recognize outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia that encourage greater mutual understanding of and among the peoples and nations of this vast and culturally diverse region. The Prize consists of a cash award of US $30,000, which is split equally between the fiction and nonfiction winners.
In February each year, two panels of judges select five finalists in each category, fiction and nonfiction. The winners are chosen from among these finalists in late March. Along with the winners and finalists, the Prize also publishes an annual list of notable books in the fiction and nonfiction categories, which are also drawn from the judging process. Thus, each year, the Prize recognizes, celebrates and promotes a wide variety of worthwhile books.
Manitoba Book Awards
The Manitoba Writers' Guild will with the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers, awards Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards. These awards include the following:
McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award
Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction
Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
The John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and others.
Orange Prize for Fiction
"In 1991, a Booker shortlist was announced which contained no women at all. Some of the novels included on the list were wonderful, others less so, but it prompted many people - men and women alike - to imagine the outcry had a list containing no men been released. The media, commentators, authors, would all have interpreted that as a highly political and controversial list. The issue for most of us was not 'unfairness' or interest in a slavish attention to quotas or equal divison of the spoils - after all, art (like life) is not like that! But we were concerned at the idea that many of the biggest literary prizes often appeared to over look wonderful writing by women. And, since prizes are so instrumental in telling potential readers about writers, we did think that many novels by women were possibly not being brought to the attention of readers who'd appreciate them.
Orange - with the flare and innovative approach to investment in the arts in Britain, which has characterized all their cultural partnerships since then - decided to sponsor the Prize for Fiction, attracted as much by the educational and lifelong learning initiatives that were planned to run parallel to the main prize. Over a matter of weeks at Christmas 1994, arrangements were made. The Prize was announced at the ICA in January 1995 and, after five months of hectic journalistic attack and counter-attack, the first Orange Prize for Fiction was awarded." - Kate Mosse, Co-Founder and Honorary Director.
Pat Lowther Award - League of Canadian Poets
The Pat Lowther Memorial Award is given for a book of poetry by a Canadian woman published in the preceding year, and is in memory of the late Pat Lowther, whose career was cut short by her untimely death in 1975. The award carries a $1,000 prize. It is presented each year at the League's Annual General Meeting in May or June, with the shortlist announced in April.
Quebec Writers Federation Awards
QWF (Quebec Writers' Federation) was born when members of FEWQ (Federation of English Writers of Quebec) and QSPELL (Quebec Society for the Promotion of English Language Literature) voted in 1998 to unite their activities. The two organizations had been co-funded by SODEC since 1994 and shared an office at the Atwater Library. They also shared similar mandates and had already collaborated on joint projects, such as Write pour Ecrire, Tongue-tied/langue-liee and the Irving Layton Tribute, as well as the initial Writers & Writing series of literary readings.
QSPELL was incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1987 and was best known for its annual literary awards. QSPELL Prizes, which in future will be called the QWF Prizes, now include the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, the First Book Award, a Translation Prize, and the Community Award.
Saskatchewan Book Awards
The Saskatchewan Book Awards were established in 1993 by the joint efforts of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, Saskatchewan Publishers Group and Saskatchewan Library Association. Saskatchewan Book Awards Inc. was incorporated in 1994. These awards include the following:
Book of the Year
Brenda MacDonald Riches First Book Award
Fiction Award
Non-Fiction Award
Regina Book Award
Saskatoon Book Award
Anne Szumigalski Poetry Award and others.
Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour
The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal has been awarded every year since 1947, with the exception of 1959. The number of entries has grown until, in 1998, a total of fifty-five books were put forward for consideration. A panel of Judges is appointed from across Canada by a committee of the Associates' Board of Directors. Publishers and writers across Canada await the announcement of the winner each year. A short list of five books is published in March and the winning book is announced in April. The Medal and cash award is presented at the Award Dinner held in late May or early June, in Orillia. The award has attained an international reputation and is the only award of its kind for Canadian humour.
Toronto Book Awards
The Toronto Book Awards were first presented by Toronto City Council in 1974 to honour authors of books of literary and artistic merit that are evocative of Toronto.
These annual awards offer $15,000 in prize money. Each shortlisted author (usually four to six) receives $1,000 and the winning author is awarded the remainder. Previous winners include Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley, Camilla Gibb, Katherine Govier, A.B. McKillop, Anne Michaels and Michael Ondaatje.
Trillium Book Award
In 1994, the prize was expanded to include the Prix Trillium, a separate prize for Ontario’s francophone writers and their publishers.
The award offers a total of $12,000 to the winning author plus a prize of $2,500 to their publisher. The English and French prizes are identical, a winner is chosen in each language. The publishers of all Trillium Book Award finalists receive a grant for the book’s promotion prior to the announcement of the winner. The Minister of Culture announces the award winner as chosen by the respective juries at a special event traditionally held in spring.
The Trillium Award is open to books in any genre: fiction, non-fiction, drama, children’s books, and poetry. Anthologies, new editions, re-issues and translations are not eligible. Three jury members per language judge the submissions, select the shortlist and the winning title. The jury is composed of writers and other members of the literary community.
Winterset Award
The Winterset Award is designed to encourage and promote excellence in all genres of writing. One prize of $5000, and two prizes of $1000 are awarded annually. The Award is sponsored by the Sandra Fraser Gwyn Foundation. Published literary works, written either by a native-born Newfoundland and Labradorian or by a resident of the province are eligible for consideration for the award. The award is given to an author of an outstanding literary work in any writing genre (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, published drama), regardless of the subject matter.
Writer's Trust Awards
The Writers' Trust believes that the remarkable talents of Canadian writers must not only be widely recognized and applauded; they must be rewarded. Our annual awards ensure that our writers' powerful voices will continue to be heard, at home and abroad. Awards provide writers with the time and resources needed to hone their craft. Awards inspire other authors to emulate them, expanding the nation's garden of literary excellence.
These awards include the following:
Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize, Pearson Writer's Trust Non-Fiction Prize, Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, Journey Prize.
Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador
The Writers Alliance administers four provincial book awards, presented bi-annually on alternate years. Non-Fiction and poetry alternate with fiction and children's literature/young adult. Only books written by residents of Newfoundland and Labrador are eligible. The awards are presented at Government House, usually on Canada Book Day, under the patronage of the Lieutenant Governor.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards are administered by the Writers Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador under the distinguished patronage of the Lieutenant-Governor. They are financed mainly by corporate and private sponsors, each of whom contributes $3000 toward the administration of the awards, which includes a cash prize of $1000 for the winners.
Writers Federation of New Brunswick Awards
The WFNB Annual Literary Competition was established in 1984, and awards prizes totalling $2200.00 each year. Categories include: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, short fiction and childrens.
Writers Federation of Nova Scotia Awards
The Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia hosts an annual competition for unpublished works and administers three competitions for published works in poetry, fiction and non-fiction.
Unless specified otherwise, competitions are open to native or resident Atlantic Canadians who were either born in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia or New Brunswick and spent a substantial portion of their lives living in one or a combination of these provinces, or who have lived in one or a combination of these provinces for at least 24 months prior to the entry deadline date. The Richardson is only open to Nova Scotians, while the Atlantic Writing Competition is open only to Atlantic residents.
The awards are:
Atlantic Poetry Prize.
Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award.
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. |
