Five Canadian books have made the shortlist for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for nonfiction.
The $75,000 award recognizes the best in Canadian nonfiction. It is the largest prize for nonfiction in Canada.
The shortlisted books are Martha Baillie’s There Is No Blue, Chase Joynt’s Vantage Points, Amy Lin’s Here After, Lisa Moore and Jack Whalen’s Invisible Prisons and Jenny Heijun Wills’ Everything and Nothing At All. The works range in topics from coping with sudden loss to a testimony of a fight for justice; this year’s books were chosen from 117 titles by 74 publishing imprints.
The shortlisted titles are available in accessible formats through the Centre of Equitable Library Access.
The books were selected by a jury of Canadian nonfiction writers: Annahid Dashtgard, Taylor Lambert and Christina Sharpe. Sharpe won last year’s prize for her book Ordinary Notes.
Other past winners include Tomson Highway, Elizabeth Hay, Jessica J. Lee and current nominee Wills for Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related in 2019 .
The Writers’ Trust of Canada is an organization that supports Canadian writers through literary awards, fellowships, financial grants, mentorships and more.
It also gives out 11 prizes in recognition of the year’s best in fiction, nonfiction and short story, as well as mid-career and lifetime achievement awards.
The Writers’ Trust has given out a nonfiction prize since 1997. Hilary Weston has sponsored the prize since 2011. As of 2023, the prize has increased to $75,000. Each remaining finalist will receive $5,000. Co-authors will split the prize money.
The winners will be announced at the Writers’ Trust awards gala on Nov. 19, 2024.
Get to know the Hilary Weston 2024 finalists and their books below.
There Is No Blue is a memoir featuring three essays about significant losses Martha Baillie experienced. It’s a response to the death of her mother, father and sister along as ruminations on what made them so alive.
“An elegy to the beautiful fight to keep a family together and an ode to the devastating loss when things fall apart,” said the jury in a press statement.
Baillie is a Toronto-based author. Her novel The Incident Report was on the 2009 Giller Prize longlist and was adapted into a feature film called Darkest Miriam. Her other books include Sister Language and The Search for Heinrich Schlögel.
When writer and filmmaker Chase Joynt discovers his connection to media figure Marshall McLuhan by way of old family documents, he finds himself exploring a difficult past and contextualizing those experiences with other sources, media and stories. Vantage Points shows how masculinity and media impacts the stories we tell and reveals surprising connections.
“A remarkable nonfiction kaleidoscope,” said the jury in a press statement. “Vantage Points grapples with the long shadows cast by masculinity, heteronormativity and abuse.”
Joynt is a Canadian director and writer. His most recent film, Framing Agnes, won the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. His book You Only Live Twice, co-written with Mike Hoolboom was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
Here After tells the powerful love story between Amy Lin and her husband Kurtis and how she copes with his sudden death. Lin shares how this loss upended her ideas of grief, strength and memory.
“A memoir about love, about grief, about what survives a sudden and terrible loss,” said the jury. “Here After is a beautiful testament to surviving as the one left behind.”
Lin is a Calgary-based writer whose work has been published in Ploughshares. She has also received residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. Here After is her first book.
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In Invisible Prisons, told through the prose of author Lisa Moore, Jack Whalen shares the violence and abuse he experienced as a child at a St. John’s boarding school for four years. Despite the pain he endured, he found love and satisfaction as a husband and father. After hearing about what happened to him, his daughter promised to become a lawyer to help him seek justice — and that’s just what she did. Now, Whalen’s case is part of a lawsuit that is before the courts.
“An indictment, a courageous testimony, and a call to change,” said the jury. “Moore and Whalen give language to the violence hiding in plain sight.”
Moore is a Newfoundland-based writer. Her books include February, which won Canada Reads 2013 when it was defended by Trent McClellan; Caught, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2013 and was made into a miniseries for CBC television; the YA novel Flannery and the short story collection Something for Everyone, which was on the longlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Whalen was once imprisoned in a small cell in a St. John’s boarding school and is an advocate for justice for children who endured solitary confinement. He divides his time between Oshawa, Ont. and St. John’s.
Everything and Nothing At All is an essay collection that discusses Jenny Heijun Wills’ quest for belonging as a transnational and transracial adoptee, a pansexual and polyamorous person and a parent with a life-long eating disorder. Drawing on her life experiences, she creates a vision of family — chosen, adopted and biological all at once.
“These richly decorated and incisive essays are sometimes poignant, sometimes harrowing, and always rooted deeply in Wills’ lived experience,” said the jury in a press statement.
Wills is a writer born in Seoul and raised in Southern Ontario. Her memoir Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award for Nonfiction and the 2020 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. She currently lives in Winnipeg and teaches English at the University of Winnipeg.