Introduced in 1975, the Canadian Authors Association (CAA) Literary Awards, continue the association’s long tradition of honouring Canadian writers who achieve excellence without sacrificing popular appeal.

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."

2009 Winners

CAA / MOSAID Technologies, Inc. Award for Fiction
Nino Ricci, Toronto, for The Origin of Species, Phyllis Bruce Books (HarperCollins Canada)
Prize: $2500 and a silver medal

CAA / Lela Common Award for Canadian History
J.M. Bumsted, Winnipeg, for Lord Selkirk: A Life , University of Manitoba Press
Prize: $2500 and a silver medal

CAA / Carol Bolt Award for Drama
Vern Thiessen, Long Island, NY/Edmonton, Alberta, for 'Vimy'
Playwrights Canada Press
Prize: $2500 and a silver medal

CAA Award for Poetry
Elise Partridge, Vancouver, for Chameleon Hours
House of Anansi Press
Prize: $1000 and a silver medal

CAA/BookTelevision Emerging Writer Award
James Cummins, Montreal, for Ambrosia: About a Culture
Prize: $500 and a silver medal

The 2008 CAA Literary Awards winners:

CAA/MOSAID Technologies, Inc. Award for Fiction Paulette Jiles, Utopia, TX, for Stormy Weather (HarperCollins Canada. ISBN: 9780002006040) Prize: $2500 and a silver medal Oil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks; that is, when he's not spending his meager earnings at gambling joints, race tracks, and dance halls. And in every small town in which the windblown family settles, mother Elizabeth does her level best to make each sparse, temporary house they inhabit a home. But the fall of 1937 ushers in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, and the family's fortunes sink further than they ever anticipated when a questionable "accident" leaves Elizabeth and her girls alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times. With no choice left to them, they return to the abandoned family farm. It is Jeanine, proud and stubborn, who single-mindedly devotes herself to rebuilding the farm and their lives. But hard work and good intentions won't make ends meet or pay the back taxes they owe on their land. In desperation, the Stoddard women place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack's one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. And Jeanine, the fatherless "daddy's girl," must decide if she will gamble it all . . . on love. About the Author Paulette Jiles is a poet and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the bestselling novel Enemy Women. She lives in San Antonio, Texas Amazon.ca \| Abe Books Canada \| Chapters.Indigo.ca
CAA/Lela Common Award for Canadian History Robert Wright (below right), Toronto, for Three Nights in Havana (HarperCollins Canada. ISBN: 9780002006262) Prize: $2500 and a silver medal On January 26, 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau embarked on his historic three-day visit to Havana, becoming the first leader of a NATO country to visit Cuba since the crippling 1960 American economic embargo. The trip was widely denounced, especially for its timing, as Castro had recently sent Cuban soldiers to fight a civil war in Angola. As the Americans watched warily, Trudeau, accompanied by his wife, Margaret, and baby Michel, was greeted in Havana by 250,000 cheering Cubans and a 30- foot poster of himself. "Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!" Trudeau would famously shout at the love-in. Margaret would declare Castro "the sexiest man alive." In this fascinating first-ever portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, author and historian Robert Wright brings to life three critical days when Canadian politics played on the international stage. Wright describes how, long before he was prime minister, Trudeau had attempted to canoe to Cuba, and how Castro visited Montreal as a young revolutionary, later welcoming FLQ terrorists to his tiny island. In a revealing look at their personalities and political ideologies, Wright shows how the two leaders, despite their official positions as allies of rival empires, had determinedly refused to exist merely as handmaidens to the United States. This fact, he asserts, is what brought them to power, and what drew them to each other. Wright draws on extensive insight from political commentators and historians as many interviewees talk candidly for the first time. A book that will tap into our continuing fascination with Pierre Trudeau and our interest in the future political course of Cuba, Three Nights in Havana is an intimate and insightful portrait of two controversial and often misunderstood figures and their place in history. From the Publisher Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro became friends despite their differences. They agreed to disagree; the same is true of Canada and Cuba. And it all began on a tiny coral key off Cuba's southern shore in 1976, with the cheer heard round the world: "Viva el primer ministro Fidel Castro!" - from Three Nights in Havan Amazon.ca \| Abe Books Canada \| Chapters.Indigo.ca
CAA/Carol Bolt Award for Drama Colleen Murphy, Toronto, for The December Man (l’homme de décembre) (Playwrights Canada Press. ISBN: 9780887545955) Prize: $1000 and a silver medal The December Man(L’homme de décembre) is a tragedy in which the humanity of the characters gives the play a surprising buoyancy. Heartbreaking yet never sentimental, spare yet complex, with a flawless structure, this is a brave and important play. Biography Colleen Murphy was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec and grew up in a small town north of Lake Superior. She studied acting at Ryerson University and at the Strasberg Institute in New York. Her radio dramas Fire Engine Red and Pumpkin Eaters, won third and second prizes, respectively, in the 1985 and 1990 CBC Literary Competitions. Beating Heart Cadaver was nominated for a GG in drama in 1999. Murphy is also a filmmaker; her film Shoemaker (1995) won several prizes, including three Genies. The December Man won the 2006 Enbridge playRites Award. Colleen Murphy lives in Toronto.
CAA Award for Poetry Asa Boxer, Montreal, for The Mechanical Bird Véhicule Press. ISBN: 9781550652277) (Prize: $1000 and a silver medal Book Description An old idea of reality animates the poems in The Mechanical Bird: things are never what they seem. Opening with a quick-talking disquisition on lying (Keep it simple, tidy, / take a noncommittal stance) and ending with masterly mediation on the workshop and its drawing-board dreams, Asa Boxers debut constantly tests the claims of authenticity over artifice. Objects, settings and everyday details are swept up in an imagination that can never quite shake the sense of the visible worldeven nature itselfas an artful mixture of fact and invention. As suggested by the eponymous metal songster, these poems are exquisitely crafted, infused with a sense of kinetic spell-making, and sing with an exuberant trust in their own guile. About the Author Montreal writer Asa Boxer won first prize in the 2004 CBC/enRoute poetry competition for his poem cycle entitled The Workshop, which is included in The Mechanical Bird. He was also shortlisted for the 2005 CBC Literary Awards. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in London Magazine, Arc, Books in Canada, Maisonneuve and CNQ. Amazon.ca \| Abe Books Canada \| Chapters.Indigo.ca
In addition, the CAA administers a special award for Canadian writers under 30. This year’s winner is: CAA/BookTelevision Emerging Writer Award Mark Haroun, Calgary, for an impressive body of recent work. Prize: $500 and a silver medal

Past Winners: Fiction | Poetry | History

Past Winners CAA Award for Fiction Winners

1975 Fred Stinson - Lonesome Hero
1976 No award
1977 Carol Shields - Small Ceremonies
1978 Jane Rule - The Young in One Another’s Arms
1979 Marian Engel - The Glassy Sea
1980 No award
1981 Hugh MacLennan - Voices in Time
1982 Joy Kogawa - Obason
1983 W.P. Kinsella - Shoeless Joe
1984 Heather Robertson - Willie: A Romance
1985 Timothy Findley - Not Wanted On The Voyage
1986 Robertson Davies - What’s Bred In The Bones
1987 No award
1988 Brian Moore - The Colour of Blood
1989 Joan Clark - The Victory of Geraldine Gull
1990 James Houston - Running West
1991 David Adams Richards - Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace
1992 Alberto Manguel - News From a Foreign Country
1993 Neil Bissoondath - The Innocence of Age
1994 Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride
1995 Bernice Morgan - Waiting for Time
1996 L.R. Wright - Mother Love
1997 Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees
1998 Rita Donovan - Landed
1999 Wayne Johnston - The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
2000 Alistair MacLeod - No Great Mischief
2001 Elizabeth Hay - A Student of Weather
2002 Will Ferguson - Generica
2003 Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters
2004 Douglas Coupland - Hey Nostradamus
2005 Jeffrey Moore - The Memory Artists
2006 Joseph Boyden - Three Day Road
2007 Richard Wagamese - Dream Wheels
2008 Paulette Jiles - Stormy Weather

Past Winners CAA Award for Poetry Winners

1975 Tome Wayman - For and Against the Moon: Blues, Yells and Chuckles
1976 Jim Green - North Book
1977 Sid Stephen - Beothuck Poems
1978 Alden Nowlan - Smoked Glass
1979 Andrew Suknaski - The Ghosts You Call Poor
1980 Michael Ondaatje - There’s A Trick With A Knife That I’m Learning To Do
1981 Leona Gom - Land of The Peace
1982 Gary Geddes - The Acid Test
1983 George Amabile - the presence of fire
1984 Don McKay - Birding Or Desire
1985 Leonard Cohen - Book of Mercy
1986 P.K. Page - The Glass Air
1987 Al Purdy - The Collected Poems, 1956-1986
1988 Patrick Lane - Selected Poems
1989 Bruce Rice - Daniel
1990 Don Bailey - Homeless Heart
1991 Richard Lemm - Preclude To The Bacchanal
1992 Anne Michaels - Miner’s Pond
1993 Lorna Crozier - Inventing The Hawk
1994 George Bowering - George Bowering Selected Poems
1995 Tim Lilburn - Moosehead Sandhills
1996 Di Brandt - Jerusalem, beloved
1997 E.D. Blodgett - Apostrophes: Woman at a Piano
1998 Anne Szumigalski - On Glassy Wings
1999 Janice Kulyk Keefer - Marrying the Sea
2000 Helen Humphreys - Anthem
2001 Carmine Starnino - Credo
2002 Tim Bowling - Darkness and Silence
2003 Margaret Avison - Concrete and Wild Carrot
2004 Chris Banks - Bonfires
2005 Peter Trower - Haunted Hills and Hanging Valleys
2006 Barry Dempster - The Burning Alphabet
2007 Sarah Klassen - A Curious Beatitude
2008 Asa Boxer - The Mechanical Bird

Past Winners CAA Lela Common Award for Canadian History Winners

1997 Phil Jenkins - An Acre of Time
1998 Dorothy Harley Eber - Images of Justice
1999 Rod McQueen - The Eatons
2000 D’Arcy Jenish - Indian Fall: The Last Great Days of the Plains Cree and Blackfoot Conspiracy
2001 Will Ferguson - Canadian History for Dummies
2002 Ken McGoogan - Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin
2003 Derek Hayes - Historical Atlas of Canada
2004 Ishmael Alunik, Eddie D. Kolausok and David Morrison - Across Time and Tundra: The Inuvialuit of the Western Arctic
2005 Charlotte Gray - The Museum Called Canada
2006 J.L. Granatstein - The Last Good War
2007 Mark Zuehlke - For Honour’s Sake: The War of 1812 and the Brokering of an Uneasy Peace
2008 Robert Wright - Three Nights in Havana

CAA/MOSAID Technologies, Inc. Award for Fiction Paulette Jiles, Utopia, TX, for Stormy Weather (HarperCollins Canada. ISBN: 9780002006040) Prize: $2500 and a silver medal Oil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks; that is, when he's not spending his meager earnings at gambling joints, race tracks, and dance halls. And in every small town in which the windblown family settles, mother Elizabeth does her level best to make each sparse, temporary house they inhabit a home. But the fall of 1937 ushers in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, and the family's fortunes sink further than they ever anticipated when a questionable "accident" leaves Elizabeth and her girls alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times. With no choice left to them, they return to the abandoned family farm. It is Jeanine, proud and stubborn, who single-mindedly devotes herself to rebuilding the farm and their lives. But hard work and good intentions won't make ends meet or pay the back taxes they owe on their land. In desperation, the Stoddard women place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack's one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. And Jeanine, the fatherless "daddy's girl," must decide if she will gamble it all . . . on love. About the Author Paulette Jiles is a poet and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the bestselling novel Enemy Women. She lives in San Antonio, Texas Amazon.ca \| Abe Books Canada \| Chapters.Indigo.ca
CAA/Lela Common Award for Canadian History Robert Wright (below right), Toronto, for Three Nights in Havana (HarperCollins Canada. ISBN: 9780002006262) Prize: $2500 and a silver medal On January 26, 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau embarked on his historic three-day visit to Havana, becoming the first leader of a NATO country to visit Cuba since the crippling 1960 American economic embargo. The trip was widely denounced, especially for its timing, as Castro had recently sent Cuban soldiers to fight a civil war in Angola. As the Americans watched warily, Trudeau, accompanied by his wife, Margaret, and baby Michel, was greeted in Havana by 250,000 cheering Cubans and a 30- foot poster of himself. "Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!" Trudeau would famously shout at the love-in. Margaret would declare Castro "the sexiest man alive." In this fascinating first-ever portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, author and historian Robert Wright brings to life three critical days when Canadian politics played on the international stage. Wright describes how, long before he was prime minister, Trudeau had attempted to canoe to Cuba, and how Castro visited Montreal as a young revolutionary, later welcoming FLQ terrorists to his tiny island. In a revealing look at their personalities and political ideologies, Wright shows how the two leaders, despite their official positions as allies of rival empires, had determinedly refused to exist merely as handmaidens to the United States. This fact, he asserts, is what brought them to power, and what drew them to each other. Wright draws on extensive insight from political commentators and historians as many interviewees talk candidly for the first time. A book that will tap into our continuing fascination with Pierre Trudeau and our interest in the future political course of Cuba, Three Nights in Havana is an intimate and insightful portrait of two controversial and often misunderstood figures and their place in history. From the Publisher Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro became friends despite their differences. They agreed to disagree; the same is true of Canada and Cuba. And it all began on a tiny coral key off Cuba's southern shore in 1976, with the cheer heard round the world: "Viva el primer ministro Fidel Castro!" - from Three Nights in Havan Amazon.ca \| Abe Books Canada \| Chapters.Indigo.ca
CAA/Carol Bolt Award for Drama Colleen Murphy, Toronto, for The December Man (l’homme de décembre) (Playwrights Canada Press. ISBN: 9780887545955) Prize: $1000 and a silver medal The December Man(L’homme de décembre) is a tragedy in which the humanity of the characters gives the play a surprising buoyancy. Heartbreaking yet never sentimental, spare yet complex, with a flawless structure, this is a brave and important play. Biography Colleen Murphy was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec and grew up in a small town north of Lake Superior. She studied acting at Ryerson University and at the Strasberg Institute in New York. Her radio dramas Fire Engine Red and Pumpkin Eaters, won third and second prizes, respectively, in the 1985 and 1990 CBC Literary Competitions. Beating Heart Cadaver was nominated for a GG in drama in 1999. Murphy is also a filmmaker; her film Shoemaker (1995) won several prizes, including three Genies. The December Man won the 2006 Enbridge playRites Award. Colleen Murphy lives in Toronto.
CAA Award for Poetry Asa Boxer, Montreal, for The Mechanical Bird Véhicule Press. ISBN: 9781550652277) (Prize: $1000 and a silver medal Book Description An old idea of reality animates the poems in The Mechanical Bird: things are never what they seem. Opening with a quick-talking disquisition on lying (Keep it simple, tidy, / take a noncommittal stance) and ending with masterly mediation on the workshop and its drawing-board dreams, Asa Boxers debut constantly tests the claims of authenticity over artifice. Objects, settings and everyday details are swept up in an imagination that can never quite shake the sense of the visible worldeven nature itselfas an artful mixture of fact and invention. As suggested by the eponymous metal songster, these poems are exquisitely crafted, infused with a sense of kinetic spell-making, and sing with an exuberant trust in their own guile. About the Author Montreal writer Asa Boxer won first prize in the 2004 CBC/enRoute poetry competition for his poem cycle entitled The Workshop, which is included in The Mechanical Bird. He was also shortlisted for the 2005 CBC Literary Awards. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in London Magazine, Arc, Books in Canada, Maisonneuve and CNQ. Amazon.ca \| Abe Books Canada \| Chapters.Indigo.ca
In addition, the CAA administers a special award for Canadian writers under 30. This year’s winner is: CAA/BookTelevision Emerging Writer Award Mark Haroun, Calgary, for an impressive body of recent work. Prize: $500 and a silver medal

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The 2008 CAA Literary Awards winners:

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Past Winners CAA Lela Common Award for Canadian History Winners