David Huebert and Michelle Butler Hallett among the winners of 2022 Atlantic Book Awards

David Huebert and Michelle Butler Hallett are among the winners of the 2022 Atlantic Book Awards, a coalition of 13 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. The winners were announced on June 9 in Halifax as part of the Atlantic Book Awards Festival.

David Huebert's short story collection Chemical Valley won the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction.

Huebert's latest collection of short stories, is named after Chemical Valley, a region in Sarnia, Ont., with a large number of plants and refineries. Many of Huebert's characters in Chemical Valley make their living from the petrochemical industry, but also see the impacts of climate change.

Huebert is the Halifax author of two poetry collections and two works of fiction. His first collection of short stories, Peninsula Sinking, won the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award and was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Fiction Prize. He won the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize for his story Enigma.

The Atlantic Book Awards includes the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, one of Canada's largest book prizes. Worth $30,000, the prize honours the work of fiction writers in the Atlantic region and provides "the gift of time and peace of mind" essential for creating new work.

This year, the award was given to Michelle Butler Hallett for her novel Constant Nobody. The work of historical fiction is set around the times of  Spanish Civil War and tells the story of secret agents caught up in a web of complicity, love, tyranny and identity.

Butler Hallett is a St. John's author who writes fiction about violence, evil, love, and grace. Constant Nobody is her fifth novel and her most recent novel, This Marlowe, was longlisted for the ReLit Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. 

Here is the complete list of winners:

• Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction: Chemical Valley by David Huebert
• Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature: Thanks a Lot, Universe by Chad Lucas
• APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award: Future Possible by Mireille Eagan
• Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing: Insurgent Love by Ardath Whynacht
• Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award: Alexa! by Stephen Kimber
• George Borden Writing for Change Award: My Daughter Rehtaeh Parsons by Glen Canning with Susan McClelland
• J.M. Abraham Poetry Award: Poisonous if Eaten Raw by Alyda Faber
• Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration: This is Ruby by Sara O'Leary, illustrated by Alea Marley
• Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Non-Fiction: A Womb in the Shape of a Heart by Joanne Gallant
• Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Fiction: Short Mercy by Colin Sweets Arsenault
• Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award Fiction – Jude and Diana by Sharon Robart-Johnson
• Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award: Constant Nobody by Michelle Butler Hallett

Past winners include Tyler LeBlanc, Alison Taylor, Michael Crummey, Ami McKay, Marina Endicott and Lucas Crawford.