I'm always grateful for my invitation to the Writers' Trust Awards presentation every November. It's a great gathering of writers (Toronto-area writers anyway), and also it gives a ton of money out every year ($270,000 last night. I had real regrets that I could not attend last night. I hope it doesn't mean I get dropped from the invitation list.
The Hilary Weston prize in nonfiction went to Dan Werb, a journalist not a historian, but the author of what may become part of the historic record on the pandemic: The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure. The short list was a healthy mix of memoir/personal writing and researched nonfiction like Werb's.
Also Candace Savage, nonfiction chronicler of life and history on the prairies for many years, received the Matt Cohen Award in honour of a writing life
