David Bezmozgis is a finalist for the Trillium Book Prize. (CBC)

David Gilmour’s The Perfect Order of Things and David Bezmozgis’ The Free World are among the finalists for the Trillium Prize, an Ontario award for fiction or poetry.

Toronto-based Bezmozgis won this year’s Amazon First Novel Award for The Free World, about three generations of Russian Jews who seek new lives in the West. The book was also a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award.

The Perfect Order of Things, about a man’s quest to rewrite the past to balance old scores is Gilmour’s seventh novel. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2005 for A Perfect Night to Go to China.

The other nominees for the $20,000 book prize:

• Ken Babstock, Methodist Hatchet, House of Anansi.
• Tony Burgess, Idaho Winter, ECW Press.
• Kirsten den Hartog, And Me Among Them, Freehand Books.
• Phil Hall, Killdeer, BookThug.

Both Killdeer and Methodist Hatchet are poetry collections, unusual choices for the best book award. Both are also nominees for the Griffin Prize in poetry. Killdeer has already won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry.

A separate $10,000 Trillium Award is offered for poetry in English. The nominees are:

• Helen Guri, Match, Coach House Books.
• Jacob McArthur Mooney, Folk, McClelland & Stewart.
• Nick Thran, Earworm, Nightwood Editions.

Five French-language books and three French poets are also finalists for Trillium Awards. Each finalist for a book or poetry prize wins $500 and the editor of the winning book earns $2,500.

The winners will be announced June 20 in Toronto.