Donoghue, Winter in running for Trillium Book Award
Emma Donoghue and Michael Winter are among the authors in competition for the 2011 Trillium Book Awards.
Organizers announced a list of 20 French- and English-language finalists for Ontario's annual literary honour on Monday. Established in 1987, the Trillium Book Awards celebrate literary excellence by Ontario writers.
Irish-born London, Ont.-based Donoghue is an English-language fiction nominee for Room, her harrowing novel about an imprisoned mother and child.
The dark story was nominated for a host of awards — including the prestigious Man Booker Prize. It won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize for fiction.
Toronto-based, Newfoundland writer Winter is also a contender in the English-language fiction category for his book The Death of Donna Whalen.
The "documentary fiction" title is based on a real-life murder case in St. John's in 1993, with Winter condensing and weaving together court testimony, news reports and recordings from the criminal investigation into a suspenseful tale. The book was also nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Donoghue and Winter face four rivals for the fiction prize, worth $20,000:
- What Disturbs Our Blood, by James FitzGerald.
- The Amazing Absorbing Boy, by Rabindranath Maharaj.
- Book, by Ken Sparling.
- The Reinvention of the Human Hand, by Paul Vermeersch.
Other Trillium 2011 nominees include:
French-language fiction (worth $20,000):
- Un souffle venu de loin, by Estelle Beauchamp.
- Laisse-moi te dire, by Murielle Beaulieu.
- La mémoire de l'aile, by Andrée Christensen.
- Pendant que l'Autre en moi t’écoute, by Michel Dallaire.
- Le soixantième parallèle, by Didier Leclair.
English-language poetry (worth $10,000):
- Sweet, by Dani Couture.
- Tiny, Frantic, Stronger, by Jeff Latosik.
- Complete Physical, by Shane Neilson.
- At the Gates of the Theme Park, by Peter Norman.
French-language children's literature (worth $10,000 and awarded in alternating years with the French-language poetry honour):
- La piste sanglante, Gilles Dubois.
- Ariane et son secret, Sylvie Frigon.
- Étienne Brûlé : Le fils de Champlain, Jean-Claude Larocque et Denis Sauvé.
- La première guerre de Toronto, Daniel Marchildon.
- Les voleurs de couleurs, Aurélie Resch.
The finalists will be celebrated at an evening reception and authors' reading in Toronto on June 16, with this year's winners announced at a luncheon the following day.