Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Prize Watch: GGs in non-fiction

Shortlists for the Governor General's Literary Awards came out this morning, and immediately crashed the Canada Council' GG site. (Still slow -- lots of bells and whistles on it) But it's back, and the news got out anyway.

Non-fiction nominees (just four, which is good. Shortlists should be short.):
Michael Harris, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection (HarperCollins Publishers)
Arno Kopecky, The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway  (Douglas & McIntyre)
Edmund Metatawabin with Alexandra Shimo, Up Ghost River: A Chief's Journey through the Turbulent Waters of Native History (Knopf Canada)
Maria Mutch, Know the Night: A Memoir of Survival in the Small Hours (Knopf Canada) 
Not just that I haven't read these; I don't think I'd heard of any. But an interesting list, on the literary side of non-fiction, maybe? Apparently there is no overlap between the Giller list and the GG list in fiction; similarly none between this list and the Hilary Weston nonfiction list recently announced which is maybe a little more politics/journalism.

But a dearth of historians (narrowly defined, anyway) on both.
 
Follow @CmedMoore