Bridget Canning, Lisa Moore and Annick MacAskill among finalists for 2023 Atlantic Book Awards
Bridget Canning, Lisa Moore and Annick MacAskill are among the 18 writers shortlisted for the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards, a coalition of six different book prizes.
The awards, managed by the Atlantic Book Awards Society, recognize books from Atlantic Canada including poetry, illustrated children's books, adult fiction and nonfiction.
Canning is nominated in the short fiction category for her collection, No One Knows About Us, which explores how we find connection in a disconnected world. The characters act out of vengeance, kindness and vigilantism, motivated by hidden yearnings.
Canning is a writer and teacher from St. John's, Newfoundland. Her debut novel, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award and is currently being adapted for film. In 2019, she received the CBC Emerging Artist Award with ArtsNL.
Moore is nominated for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for her novel, This is How We Love, which follows protagonist Jules and her husband, who are on vacation when they learn that their 21-year old son has been viciously beaten and stabbed in the middle of a historic St. John's snowstorm.
CBC Books named This is How We Love among the top Canadian fiction of 2022.
The Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award is one of the biggest book prizes in Canada, awarding $30,000 to the winning author.
Moore is an award-winning novelist, who has made a career out of writing about the Newfoundland landscape. Her other books include Caught, February, Alligator, Open and Something for Everyone. She has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize three times: in 2002 for Open, in 2005 for Alligator and in 2013 for Caught. Her novel February won Canada Reads in 2013, when it was defended by comedian Trent McClellan.
This is How We Love is Moore's ninth novel.
MacAskill is nominated in the poetry category for Shadow Blight, a collection that reflects on the pain and isolation of pregnancy loss. It won the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
MacAskill was Arc Poetry Magazine's poet-in-residence for 2021-22. Her poetry collections include Murmurations and No Meeting Without Body, which was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award. She lives in Halifax, where she teaches French language and literature at Saint Mary's University.
The winners will be announced on June 7, at the Atlantic Book Awards gala in Halifax, as part of the Atlantic Book Festival.
You can see the complete shortlists for all the awards below.
Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction:
- The Summer the School Burned Down by Meghan Rose Allen
- No One Knows About Us by Bridget Canning
- Rafael Has Pretty Eyes by Elaine McCluskey
Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children's Literature:
- Decoding Dot Grey by Nicola Davison
- Tell Me When You Feel Something by Vicki Grant
- Heartbreak Homes by Jo Treggiari
APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award:
- Wabanaki Modern | Wabanaki Kiskukewey | Wabanaki Moderne by Emma Hassencahl-Perley and John Leroux
- Operation Masonic by Helen C. Escott
- Food, Culture, Place: Stories, Traditions, and Recipes of Newfoundland by Lori McCarthy and Marsha Tulk
Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing:
- The Solidarity Encounter: Women, Activism, and Creating Non-Colonizing Relations by Carol Lynne D'Arcangelis
- Inuit TakugatsaliuKatiget | On Inuit Cinema by Mark David Turner
- Exactly What I Said: Translating Words and Worlds by Elizabeth Yeoman
J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award:
- The Affirmations Luke Hathaway
- Hsin by Nanci Lee
- Shadow Blight by Annick MacAskill
Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award:
- Wonder World by K. R. Byggdin
- The Good Women of Safe Harbour by Bobbi French
- This is How We Love by Lisa Moore
Previous winners include authors Michael Crummey, Tyler LeBlanc, Alison Taylor, Ami McKay, Marina Endicott and Lucas Crawford.
