Cherie Dimaline's YA novel The Marrow Thieves nominated for $50K U.S. prize
Métis author Cherie Dimaline is one of six finalists in the young readers' literature category for the annual Kirkus Prize, a $50,000 US ($60,795 Cdn) prize awarded by a panel of writers, booksellers, librarians and Kirkus Reviews magazine critics.
The Toronto-based author, who is from Ontario's Georgian Bay Métis community, is nominated for her novel The Marrow Thieves, which takes place in a dystopian future where Indigenous people are hunted and harvested for their bone marrow.
The other Canadians on this year's Kirkus Prize list of finalists in the young readers' literature category include Guatemalan-born author and translator Elisa Amado for her work on the Jairo Buitrago-authored children's book Walk With Me, and Hull, Que.-based translator Madeleine Stratford for her work on picture book Me Tall, You Small by German author Lilli L'Arronge.
The remaining 2017 Kirkus Prize in the young readers' literature category are:
- Bronze and Sunflower by Cao Wenxuan, translated by Helen Wang, illustrated by Meilo So
- It All Comes Down to This by Karen English
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
In the fiction category, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, White Tears by Hari Kunzru and Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward are among the finalists. See the full fiction shortlist here.
Some of the shortlisted nonfiction titles are The Gulf by Jack E. Davis, Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood and Henry David Thoreau by Laura Dassow Walls. See the full nonfiction shortlist here.
Winners for the 2017 Kirkus Prize will be announced in Austin, Texas on Nov. 4, 2017.