Sheree Fitch among finalists for 2020 Atlantic Book Awards
Samraweet Yohannes | | Posted: June 2, 2020 3:15 PM | Last Updated: June 2, 2020
Sheree Fitch's children's book Everybody's Different on EveryBody Street is among the 35 shortlisted titles for the 2020 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 non-fiction.
Fitch's Everybody's Different on EveryBody Street is shortlisted for the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature.
The book, illustrated by Emma Fitzgerald, explores individuality and embracing everyone's gifts, weaknesses, differences and sameness.
Everybody's Different on EveryBody Street was originally created in 2001 as a fundraiser to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the Festival of Trees in support of the Nova Scotia Hospital and to raise awareness for mental illness and addiction.
Amy Spurway is nominated for two awards for her debut novel, Crow: the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Fiction.
The book follows a woman diagnosed with three highly unpredictable and inoperable brain tumours, who abandons her life in Toronto to stay in her mother's scruffy trailer in rural Cape Breton and decides to write a memoir.
The 2020 Atlantic Book Awards also includes one of Canada's largest book prizes, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, valued at $25,000.
This year's Raddall Award nominees are Nova Scotia's Jaime Burnet for Crocuses Hatch from Snow, Newfoundland's Michael Crummey for The Innocents and Nova Scotia author and filmmaker Shandi Mitchell for The Waiting Hours.
The 2020 Pioneer Award, which recognizes a Nova Scotian who has made a substantial contribution to the region's literary canon, is postponed until 2021, when it will be awarded in person.
The winners will be announced on June 30.
You can see the complete shortlists for all the awards below.
Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction
- A Dark House and Other Stories by Ian Colford
- Dig by Terry Doyle
- Nosy White Woman by Martha Wilson
Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature
- EveryBody's Different on EveryBody Street by Sheree Fitch
- A World Below by Wesley King
- I'm Finding My Talk by Rebecca Thomas
Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
- Almost Feral by Gemma Hickey
- I Lost My Talk by Rita Joe and I'm Finding My Talk by Rebecca Thomas (companion books), illustrated by Pauline Young
- Land Beyond the Sea by Kevin Major
Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
- Shaped by Silence by Rie Croll
- The Wake by Linden MacIntyre
- Truth and Conviction by L. Jane McMillan
Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing
- Listening for the Dead Bells by Marian Bruce
- As British as the King by Gerald Hallowell
- Dangerous Enemy Sympathizers by Andrew Theobald Elliott
Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award
- Daughter of Family G by Ami McKay
- Mayann Francis by The Honourable Dr. Mayann Francis
- Hell and Damnation by Marq de Villiers
Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)
- The Difference by Marina Endicott
- Broken Symmetry by Rosalie Osmond
- Crow by Amy Spurway
J.M. Abraham Poetry Award
- Year of the Metal Rabbit by Tammy Armstrong
- Smallholding by Anne Compton
- Belated Bris of the Brainsick by Lucas Crawford
Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration
- Peg Bearskin: A Traditional Newfoundland Tale, by Andy Jones and Philip Dinn, adapted from a story told by Mrs. Elizabeth Brewer and illustrated by Denise Gallagher
- Un géant dans la tête by Danielle Loranger
- Small in the City by Sydney Smith
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Non-Fiction
- Almost Feral by Gemma Hickey
- Wounded Hearts by Lois Legge
- Transplanted by Allison Watson
Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Fiction
- Dig by Terry Doyle
- Going Dutch by James Gregor
- Crow by Amy Spurway
Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award (Non-fiction)
- Grandfather's House by Clive Doucet
- Daughter of Family G by Ami McKay
- Ghosts Within by Garry Leech
Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
- Crocuses Hatch from Snow by Jaime Burnet
- The Innocents by Michael Crummey
- The Waiting Hours by Shandi Mitchell