2011 Atlantic Book Award Winners!

The 2011 Atlantic Book Award Winners were announced on Thursday night at Alderney Landing to an enthusiastic audience. See the Atlantic Book Awards web site for the full list of winning authors and illustrators. Here are some highlights:


Thomas Head Raddall Fiction prize

Annabel

by Kathleen Winter

"Haunting, sweeping in scope, and stylistically reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Annabel is a compelling debut novel about one person's struggle to discover the truth in a culture that shuns contradiction." publisher

Ann Connor Brimer Award

The Glory Wind

by Valerie Sherrard

"This striking new novel from Valerie Sherrard explores themes of friendship, loyalty, hypocrisy, and forgiveness." publisher

Atlantic Poetry Prize

Lookout: poems

by John Steffler

"The poems in John Steffler’s new collection are enlivened by the same muscular acts of attention that characterize his earlier books...Canadian literature is blessed – and animated – by John Steffler’s contributions to it." publisher


Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction

Children in the Morning

by Anne Emery

"Emery paints a poignant portrait of a girl burdened by information she was never supposed to have, and of a tormented man who, at the most critical juncture, realizes that mounting a proper defence requires fumbling around in some very dark corners." Quill and Quire


Dartmouth Book Award for Nonfiction

Captain James Cook in Atlantic Canada

by Jerry Lockett

"In this absorbing and well-researched biography Jerry Lockett tells us of Cook's experiences as a young man and of the influential men who became his mentors and patrons. He also describes Cook's role in the key British military actions at Louisbourg and Quebec which brought an effective end to the French regime in North America." publisher

Atlantic Book Award Historical Writing

Sailor's Hope: the life and times of William Cooper

by Rusty Bittermann

"Sailor’s Hope provides a moving account of a multi-faceted man, tracking his engagement with the extraordinary changes occurring in the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds in the decades after the American and French Revolutions. William Cooper was born in poverty in industrializing Scotland. Without any formal education, he worked his way up through the British merchant marine to the position of captain on voyages linking Britain with Iberia and North America." publisher


Evelyn Richardson Prize for Nonfiction

More Money than Brains

by Laura Penny

"One of Canada's funniest and most incisive social critics reveals why in North America, where governments spend so much on schools and colleges, training is valued far more than education and loud-mouth ignoramuses are widely and publicly celebrated." publisher


Margaret and John Savage First Book Award

Light Lifting

by Alexander MacLeod

"In Light Lifting, Alexander MacLeod’s long-awaited first collection of short stories, the author offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies for a city and community on the brink. Anger and violence simmer just beneath the surface and often boil over, resulting in both tragedy and tragedy barely averted. But as bleak as these stories sometimes are, there is also hope, beauty and understanding." publisher