Prize Watch: The Shaughnessy Cohen shortlist

Journalists dominate over historians among the shortlist nominees for the Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political books

• The Two Michaels: Innocent Canadian Captives and High Stakes Espionage in the US-China Cyber War by Mike Blanchfield & Fen Osler Hampson from Sutherland House;
• China Unbound: A New World Disorder by Joanna Chiu from House of Anansi;
• Flora!: A Woman in a Man’s World by Flora MacDonald & Geoffrey Stevens from McGill-Queen's;
• The Next Age of Uncertainty: How the World Can Adapt to a Riskier Future by Stephen Poloz from the PenguinRandom imprint Allen Lane
• "Indian" in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power by Jody Wilson-Raybould from HarperCollins.

Considering yesterday's notes on the state of Canadian writing and publishing, it's worth noting that the two small Canadian presses here have matched the total nominations for the big branchplants (with an academic press giving a made-in-Canada majority).

Indian in the Cabinet impressed me a lot, but it's is the only nominatted book I have read.  And the Cohen Prize juries have been unpredictable in their sense of what makes a good "political" book.

Prize Watch: Cohen Prize to China Unbound

The Writers' Trust announced the winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for 2022.  The winner is Joanna Chiu for China Unbound: A New World Disorder, published by House of Anansi Press.

I've heard impressive things about China Unbound, not the least that the Chinese-Canadian author has been harassed by agents or supporters of the Chinese government who do not appreciate the honesty of her reporting.  But it was a pretty strong list overall this year: Shortlist here