Tuesday, September 02, 2025

Prize Watch: The Dafoe Prize

 The J.W Dafoe Book Prize, presented by the Dafoe Foundation that honours the crusading twentieth-century journalist John W. Dafoe, announced a long list of ten books on Bluesky today. It's for "the best book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada’s place in the world published in the previous calendar year."

I like shortlists better (isn't three usually enough?) but I suspect no writer agrees with me. And there's some good history and some good friends on this long one, so why not?  Here's the list.

Short list of five to come on September 25. Winner October 14. The fall book prize season is underway. 

Crystal Gail Fraser’s By Strength, We Are Still Here

Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh’s Reconciling History: A Story of Canada

M.G. Vassanji’s Nowhere, Exactly

Gerald Friesen’s The Honourable John Norquay
 
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