Governor General's Award shortlists, out today, is givin' some love to historians and lots to small presses. Bill Waiser, prolific prairie historian from the University of Saskatchewan, will be the well known among the historians, but the biography of Marconi is by a McGill communications prof, Marc Raboy.
Cree lawyer and writer Harold Johnson's book on alcohol and indigenous people is another triumph for University of Regina Press, and Waiser's looks good on another small publisher Fifth House. Teva Harrison's graphic-memoir of cancer got lots of praise for both artwork and attitude, and she's published by Anansi, so only Al-Solaylee's Brown comes from one of the big multinat publishers. (Raboy of Montreal is published by Oxford Press, an academic multinat.)
Altogether an interesting and provocative list. Complete list in all genres here. The nonfiction list:
Bill Waiser, A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 (And who reads or remembers this anymore?)
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone)
Harold R. Johnson, Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours)
Teva Harrison, In-Between Days: A Memoir About Living with Cancer
Marc Raboy, Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World
