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The Atlantic Book Awards recognise the work of Canadians who live and work in the nation's four Atlantic Provinces. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island. The population of the Atlantic provinces was 2,332,535 in 2007.
In 2009 the Awards split into two with the
Winners of the 2009 Atlantic Book Awards are:
Ian Colford, Evidence (The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc.), winner of the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award.
Shauntay Grant's lovely Up Home (Nimbus Publishing), winner of the Best Atlantic Published Book Award, a $5,000 prize sponsored by Friesens Corporation, that is shared with Halifax-based publisher, Nimbus. Illustrator Susan Tooke also took the Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration.
William D. Naftel, Halifax At War: Searchlights, Squadrons and Submarines 1939-1945 (Formac Publishing), winner of the inaugural Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing and the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction.
Eric Orchard, illustrator of The Terrible, Horrible, Smelly Pirate (Nimbus Publishing), winner of the Mayor's Award for Excellence in Book Illustration.
Anne Simpson, Falling (McClelland & Steward Ltd.), winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
Dan Soucoup, general manager of Nimbus Publishing, recipient of the Mayor's Award for Literary Achievement.
Budge Wilson, Before Green Gables (Penguin), winner of the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Choice Award.
2008 Winners
Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature K.V. Johansen, Nightwalker: The Warlocks of Talverdin (Orca Books)
Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award -- Jacques Poitras, Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy (Goose Lane Editions)
Atlantic Poetry Prize - - about award - Don Domanski, All Our Wonder Unavenged (Brick Books)
Best Atlantic Published Book Award - Jacques Poitras, Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy (Goose Lane Editions)
Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction - Beatrice MacNeil, Where White Horses Gallop (Key Porter Books)
Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction - - Marq de Villiers, Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose (Thomas Allen Publishers)
Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction - - Marq de Villiers, Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose (Thomas Allen Publishers)
Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Illustration - Richard Rudnicki, Gracie, The Public Gardens Duck (Nimbus)
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award - Stephanie Domet, Homing: the whole story (from the inside out) (Invisible Publishing)
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize -- Don Hannah, Ragged Islands (Knopf Canada)
Mayor's Award for Excellence in Book Illustration - Len Wagg, Wild Nova Scotia (Nimbus Publishing) - about award
Mayor's Award for Cultural Achievement in Literature - about award- Robbie MacGregor, Invisible Publishing
2008 Shortlisted
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize - about award
Don Hannah, Ragged Islands, Knopf Canada
Bernice Morgan, Cloud of Bone, Knopf Canada
David Adams Richards, The Lost Highway, Doubleday Canada
Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction - about award
Marq de Villiers, Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose,
Thomas Allen Publishers
Stewart Donovan, The Forgotten World of RJ MacSween: A Life, Cape Breton University Press
Steven Laffoley, Hunting Halifax: In Search of History, Mystery and Murder, Pottersfield Press
Atlantic Poetry Prize- about award
Don Domanski, All Our Wonder Unavenged, Brick Books
George Murray, The Rush to Here, Nightwood Editions
Anne Simpson, Quick, McClelland & Stewart
Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction - about award
Beatrice MacNeil, Where White Horses Gallop, Key Porter Books
Carol Bruneau, Glass Voices, Cormorant Books
David Doucette, North of Smokey, Cape Breton University Press
Dartmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction - about award
A. J. B. Johnston, Endgame 1758: The Promise, the Glory and the Despair, Cape Breton University Press
Stewart Donovan, The Forgotten World of R. J. MacSween: A Life, Cape Breton University Press
Marq de Villiers, Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose, Thomas Allen Publishers
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award -about award
Bob Mersereau, The Top 100 Canadian Albums, Goose Lane Editions
Stephanie Domet, Homing: the whole story (from the inside out), Invisible Publishing
Fred Armstrong, Happiness of Fish, Jesperson Publishing
Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration -about award
Eric Orchard, A Forest For Christmas (Michael Harris, author), Nimbus Publishing
Richard Rudnicki, Gracie, The Public Gardens Duck (Judith Meyrick, author), Nimbus Publishing
Nancy Keating, A Puppy Story (Susan Pynn, author), Tuckamore Books
Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Best Published Book Award- about award
Beaverbrook - A Shattered Legacy, by Jacques Poitras, Goose Lane Editions
Miller Brittain: When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears, by Tom Smart, Goose Lane Editions
Gracie, The Public Gardens Duck, by Judith Meyrick; illustrated by Richard Rudnicki, Nimbus Publishing
Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award - about award
Steven Laffoley, Hunting Halifax: In Search of History, Mystery and Murder, Pottersfield Press
Jacques Poitras, Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, Goose Lane Editions
Harry Sawler, Twenty-first Century Irvings, Nimbus Publishing
Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature- about award
Alice Walsh, A Sky Black with Crows, Red Deer Press
K.V. Johansen, Nightwalker: The Warlocks of Talverdin, Orca
Valerie Sherrard, Speechless, Dundurn Group
PARTICIPATING INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES
New Brunswick
Benjamin's Books, Rothesay
New Brunswick Museum Gift Shop, Saint John
UNB Bookstore, Saint John
Tidewater Books, Sackville
UNB Bookstore, Fredericton
Westminster Books, Fredericton
Newfoundland & Labrador
Downhome Shoppe & Eatery, St. John’s
Nova Scotia
At the Sign of the Whale, Yarmouth
Biscuit Eater Books & Café, Mahone Bay
Box of Delights, Wolfville
Carrefour Books, halifax
The Village Florist and Hannah’s Books, Tatamagouche
The Whirligig Book Shop, Shelburne
Bookmark II, Halifax
Frog Hollow Books, Halifax
Outside the Lines, Halifax
Woozles, Halifax
Word by Word Books, Antigonish
Prince Edward Island
Bookmark I, Charlottetown
In 1993, WFNS endowed funds ($5000) for a prize to honour the work of Atlantic poets. Led by Deirdre Dwyer, Atlantic Canadian poets gave readings, held bake sales, organized raffles and wrote letters. The overwhelming support of both local and national writers, writing organizations, universities and publishers (special thanks to Harlequin Enterprises) was heartening. WFNS has subsequently worked to increase the endowment to ensure an annual $2,000 prize.
The inaugural prize was awarded in 1998 to Carmelita McGrath for To the New World. Last year’s winner was Steve McOrmond for Primer on the Hereafter. Previous winners include John Steffler, Ken Babstock, Anne Simpson, M. Travis Lane, Brian Bartlett, Anne Compton and David Helwig.
Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature
In 1990, the Nova Scotia Library Association established the Ann Connor Brimer Award to recognize writers residing in Atlantic Canada who have made an outstanding contribution to children’s literature.
A fierce champion of a Canadian identity made strong through the vitality of its regions and a staunch friend of Canadian children’s literature, Ann Connor Brimer began her teaching career at a time when books written in Canada by Canadians for Canadians were scarce, especially among books for young readers. Ann worked to make it happen, serving as Executive Director of the Canadian Learning Materials Centre and the Atlantic Institute of Education, as Atlantic officer of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and, in 1979, co-founding Woozles, the first bookstore in the Atlantic region devoted entirely to children’s books.
The first award of $500 was presented in 1991 to Joyce Barkhouse for Pit Pony. Last year, Budge Wilson (who previously won for Oliver’s Wars) received the award for Friendships. Previous winners include Kevin Major, Alice Walsh, Don Aker, Lesley Choyce and Sheree Fitch.
The Brimer Steering Committee thanks Ann’s family and friends for their continued support, the Nova Scotia and PEI Departments of Culture, as well as the library, writing, publishing, bookselling and education communities. Thanks to all this, Ann’s original bequest of $1,000 has grown more than twenty times. Starting this year, the winner will receive $2,000 and monies raised in Ann’s name now contribute to the promotion of the shortlisted titles throughout the region and to this awards ceremony.
Best Atlantic Published Book Award
The Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association’s award for Best Atlantic Published Book recognizes publishing companies and their hardworking professionals who bring out new books each season. Each year, a publisher whose book possesses the best balance of content, presentation, quality of design and production, as well as contributing the most to an understanding of Atlantic Canada, receives the award. Last year it was Goose Lane Editions and Bruno Bobak: A Life, edited by Bernard Riordan.
The prizes for Best Atlantic Published Book have been generously donated for the fifth year by Friesen’s Corporation (first prize) and Hignell Book Printing. The first prize ($4000) goes to the winning publishing firm and a $1,000 goes to the author. The other two finalists shortlisted for the award receive $1,000 in printing credit and $250 for the authors.
The awards wouldn’t be complete without the voice of booksellers and readers who, each year since 1989, celebrate the book that flew off shelves and connected to this region. Last year Ami McKay’s The Birth House took the prize. Past winners have included: Alistair MacLeod for No Great Mischief and To Everything There is a Season, Harry Bruce for Down Home, Sheree Fitch for Sleeping Dragons All Around, Donna Morrissey for Sylvanus Now, Harry Thurston for Tidal Life, Silver Donald Cameron for Wind, Whales and Whiskey, John DeMont for Citizen Irving, Michael Harris for Rare Ambition, David Adams Richards for To Those Who Hunt the Wounded Dow
The Dartmouth Book and Writing Awards were created in 1989 by the city’s then-mayor, Dr. John P. Savage. The prize honours the best Canadian literature featuring Nova Scotia and its people, recognizing the valuable contributions writers make to our cultural heritage. Since 1990, awards have gone to both fiction and non-fiction ($1,500 each). The Dartmouth Book Award for fiction is sponsored by Jarislowsky-Fraser Ltd. and the non-fiction award is sponsored by Seamark Asset Management Ltd.
Last year, Linda Little won for her novel Scotch River and Keith McLaren one the non-fiction prize for A Race for Real Sailors. Previous recipients include: Paul Erickson, Jonathan Campbell, Harry Bruce, Claude Bissell, Budge Wilson, Harry Thurston, George Elliott Clarke, Donna Smyth, Kim Atwood, Silver Donald Cameron, Robert MacNeil, Sally Ross and Alphonse Deaveau. Two-timeaward winners include Lesley Choyce, Leo McKay Jr. and Beatrice MacNeil.
Mayor's Award for Excellence in Book Illustration
Established in 2003, this annual $1,500 prize recognizes the best in book illustration by an illustrator, artist or photographer who is a resident of the Halifax Regional Municipality. Illustrated books that have been published originally in the past calendar year and are at least 24 pages long are eligible for consideration. Winners to date include: Paul Nicholson, Susan Tooke, Jeffrey C. Domm and Frances Wolfe.
Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration
The book business needs stalwart characters and Lillian Shephered, a long-time buyer for The Book Room and life-long lover of books, who died suddenly in 1997, was one. In 2002, Lillian’s legion of friends and colleagues from Halifax, Lunenburg and Bermuda created the Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award to applaud the book that combines Lillian’s love for illustrated children’s books and her affinity for locally produced work.
The $500 prize is funded by The Book Room in Halifax and the Atlantic area publishers’ representatives. In 2003, the inaugural award was given to Susan Tooke for Full Moon Rising. Subsequent winners have been Geoff Butler for Ode to Newfoundland, Peter Rankin for Making Room, and Jeffrey C. Domm for Atlantic Puffin: Little Brother of the North.
Last year, Brenda Jones won for Skunks for Breakfast.
Customers and authors visiting The Book Room were always put at ease by Lillian Shepherd’s ready smile and laughter, but her love of life shone through most clearly when she spoke of her husband Frank and their two daughters, Lynn and Cynthia. This prize reminds us all of those moments in Lillian’s presence.
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
The Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize was established by WFNS and the Writers’ Development Trust (now the Writers’ Trust of Canada) in 1990. The Federation was profoundly honoured that Thomas Head Raddall honoured this first Atlantic Fiction Prize with his name. The initial prize was $1,000 but anonymous contributions from the author increased the value to $2,000 in 1992 and began the establishment of an endowment for the prize. After Tom’s death in 1994, the continued vision and the enormous generosity of the Raddall family has seen this endowment grow to the point where it now provides $15,000 to the winning author. The award recognizes the best work of fiction written by a native or resident Atlantic Canadian published in the previous calendar year. Last year, Linda Little won for her novel Scotch River. The first award was made in 1991 to Wayne Johnston for The Divine Ryans. Subsequent awards have gone to Herb Curtis, John Steffler, David Adams Richards, Bernice Morgan, M. T. Dohaney, Alfred Silver, Donna Morrissey and Shree Ghatage, among others.
Born in Hythe, England in 1903, Thomas Head Raddall moved to Halifax with his family in 1913. When his father was killed at Amiens in 1918, he began to support himself – Mrs. Raddall’s small army pension did not provide for children over fifteen. He went to the Canadian School of Telegraphy, spent two years at sea and then was posted to Sable Island, where he absorbed the background for The Nymph and the Lamp. The scarcity of jobs eventually obliged him to accept a backwoods post at a pulp and paper company in Milton. In his spare time, he explored his surroundings, becoming a woodsman and making friends with local Mi’kmaq guides.
Thomas Raddall was a remarkable person, self-taught and sturdily independent. The kind of man who would carefully save enough money to provide for his family so that he could, in the middle of the Depression, quit his dependable accounting job at the mill to write. His first book was a collection of stories, The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek (1939). Over the next forty years, he published twenty-five books, dozens of articles on a wide variety of subjects, more than seventy short stories, and an autobiography – selling a remarkable 2.5 million copies in a dozen languages; made radio and television appearances; became increasingly called upon as a guest speaker by various historical and literary societies; and in 1968 was asked to become Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, an offer he declined. He received honourary degrees from King’s College, Dalhousie, St. Mary’s and St. Francis Xavier Universities, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
In his long journey from pioneer to patriarch of Canadian literature, Tom Raddall spent much of his married life in a sound-proof room labouring to perfect his craft. “I had to shut myself off,” he explained, “literally shut myself off. I built a study…and I would shut myself in there and live the lives of the people in my books. Often I didn’t know whether it was Christmas or Easter as far as the actual world was concerned. The result was I was in many ways a stranger to my children, although I tried to give them time.” It is this extraordinary gift of time that Tom Raddall, and his son Tom, have given, in perpetuity, to a new generation of writers.
Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction
The Evelyn Richardson Prize was established by WFNS in 1977, shortly after Richardson’s death, to honour the best published non-fiction written by a native or resident Nova Scotian. Last year, Linden MacIntyre received this prize for Causeway: Passage from Innocence, while previous winners include Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, Harry Bruce, Alden Nowlan, Joan and Lewis Payzant, Kay Hill, Bruce Armstrong, J. Murray Beck, Brian C. Cuthbertson, Lilias M. Toward, P. B. Waite, Tony Foster, Linda Johns, Harold Horwood, Dean Jobb, Judith Fingard, Robert Pope, Sally Ross and many more.
Born in Shelburne County in 1902, Evelyn Richardson is probably best known for her Governor General’s Award-winning book We Keep a Light (McGraw Hill Ryerson, 1945). It is an autobiographical account of the years she and her husband spent on Bon Portage Island, where he was the lightkeeper. There they raised their son and two daughters while developing an ever increasing self-sufficiency on their privately owned portion of the island. We Keep a Light is a kind of Nova Scotian Swiss Family Robinson — the wild nature of the elements providing the warmth, and the determination and ingenuity of Evelyn and Morrill Richardson providing the continuity. Added responsibilities, deprivations and excitement during the Battle of the Atlantic make the account of the Richardsons’ life on Bon Portage even more remarkable. Evelyn Richardson proved that publishers’ rejections, with that hateful phrase “of local interest only,” could be overcome. One of her great accomplishments was to familiarize her national and international readers with her much loved corner of Nova Scotia.
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
The Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, presented for the first time in 2003 with a value of $1,500, recognizes the best first book of fiction or non-fiction published in the previous year by an Atlantic writer. Margaret and John Savage were instrumental in establishing the Dartmouth Book and Writing Awards in 1989. As the Mayor of Dartmouth, John Savage arranged the funding of the initial fiction and non-fiction awards. Margaret not only assisted in the arrangements of the awards, but also served the patrons of the Alderney Gate Public Library community as a volunteer. Dartmouth and the larger municipal and provincial communities have benefitted enormously from the support for writers, books, reading and cultural pursuits in general that have been synonymous with the lives of Margaret and John. Naming the “First Book Award” in their honour is a small but significant tribute to their contributions. The award has been presented to Jonathan Campbell for Tarcadia, Dan Falk for Universe on a T-Shirt, to Beth Ryan for What is Invisible, John G. Langley for Steam Lion: A Biography of Samuel Cunard and to Tom Gallant for Hard Chance: Sailing into the Heart of Love.
In 2004, the John and Margaret Savage Humanities Endowment was created to fund projects supported by Margaret and John. The endowment funds the Music and Medicine Program at the Dalhousie Medical School, the John Savage Medical Clinic in Niger and the First Book Award.
