Sharon Butala, Dawn Dumont among 2022 Alberta Book Publishing Awards finalists
CBC Books | | Posted: June 21, 2022 3:55 PM | Last Updated: June 21, 2022
Canadian writers Sharon Butala and Dawn Dumont are among the 2022 Alberta Book Publishing Awards nominees, which annually celebrate the province's best books of the year across 14 categories.
Butala is a finalist in the Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year category. Her shortlisted book, This Strange Visible Air, reflects on the ways Butala's life has changed as she has grown old. She tackles ageism, loneliness, friendship and companionship, writing about dinner parties, health challenges, complicated family relationships and the pandemic.
Butala is a Saskatchewan-born author of 21 novels and nonfiction books, including The Perfection of the Morning, Where I Live Now, Zara's Dead, Fever and Wild Rose. She is a three-time Governor General's Literary Award nominee and received the Marian Engel Award in 1998. She became an officer of the Order of Canada in 2002.
Butala, along with Canadian writers Jenna Butler and Marcello Di Cintio, is one of the judges for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Dumont is nominated in the Trade Fiction Book of the Year category for The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour. The comic novel, loosely based on a group of traditional dancers who toured Europe in the 1970s, was also nominated for a 2022 Saskatchewan Book Award.
Dumont is a Plains Cree writer, comedian and actor who lives in Saskatoon. She is the author of Rose's Run, Glass Beads and Nobody Cries at Bingo, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Alberta Readers' Choice Awards, Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Award and First Nation Communities READ Award.
Ken Haigh has been nominated in two categories — Trade Non-Fiction of the Year and Book Design — for On Foot to Canterbury, which chronicles Haigh's journey hiking across southern England and following the footsteps of medieval pilgrims to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.
On Foot to Canterbury was a finalist for the 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Also nominated in two categories is Nisha Patel for Coconut. The poetry book, a vulnerable, political, feminist collection that explores racism, identity, grief, sexuality, empowerment and love, is nominated in the Regional Book of the Year and Book Design categories. Patel was the 2019 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Champion and is the current poet laureate of Edmonton.
See the complete list of finalists below:
Trade Fiction Book of the Year:
- A Brief View From the Coastal Suite by Karen Hofmann
- Happy Sands by Barb Howard
- The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour by Dawn Dumont
- Unlocking by Amy LeBlanc
Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry:
- A Selected History of Soul Speak by Andrea Thompson
- Bearmen Descend Upon Gimli by D.A. Lockhart
- Tell the Birds Your Body Is Not a Gun by Rayanne Haines
- The Bad Wife by Micheline Maylor
Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year:
- Big Reader by Susan Olding
- Bucking Conservatism, edited by Leon Crane Bear, Larry Hannant, and Karissa Robyn Patton
- Impact, edited by E. D. Morin and Jane Cawthorne
- On Foot to Canterbury by Ken Haigh, designed by Alan Brownoff
- This Strange Visible Air by Sharon Butala
Douglas Barbour Award for Speculative Fiction:
- Seasons Between Us, edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law
- Tying the Knot by E.C. Bell
- Water: Selkies, Sirens, and Sea Monster, edited by Rhonda Parrish
Graphic Novel of the Year:
- Genghis Con by Yi-Sung Oliver Ho, Daniel Reynolds, illustrated by Chris Peterson and Ruth Redmond
- Hell's Flaw by Lovern Kindzierski, illustrated by John Bolton
- Pass Me By: Electric Vice by Kat (formerly Kyle) Simmers & Ryan Danny Owen, illustrated by Kat (formerly Kyle) Simmers
Book Illustration:
- Alberta Blue by Pat Hatherly, illustrated by Jesse Horne
- Pass Me By: Electric Vice by Kat (formerly Kyle) Simmers & Ryan Danny Owen, illustrated by Kat (formerly Kyle) Simmers
- The River Troll: A Story About Love, written and illustrated by Rich Théroux
Regional Book of the Year:
- Bucking Conservatism, edited by Leon Crane Bear, Larry Hannant, and Karissa Robyn Patton
- Coconut by Nisha Patel
- Sustainability Matters by Noel Keough with Geo Ghitter
Book Cover Design:
- Deriving by Jennifer Bowering Delisle, book cover design by Alan Brownoff
- Impact by E. D. Morin and Jane Cawthorne, book cover design by Alan Brownoff
- Last Tide by Andy Zuliani, book cover design by Kate Hargreaves
- Plastic Legacies, edited by Trisia Farrelly, Sy Ta el, and Ian Shaw, book cover design by Derek Thornton
- The Party Is Here by Georgina Beaty, book cover design by Natalie Olsen
Book Design:
- Coconut by Nisha Patel, designed by Natalie Olsen
- Great Adventures for the Faint of Heart by Cary Fagan, designed by Natalie Olsen
- On Foot to Canterbury by Ken Haigh, designed by Alan Brownoff
- rump + flank by Carol Harvey Steski, designed by Natalie Olsen
- Situating Design in Alberta, edited by Isabel Prochner and Tim Antoniuk, designed by Alan Brownoff
Scholarly & Academic Book of the Year:
- Appealing Because He Is Appalling, edited by Tamari Kitossa
- Indigenous Women and Street Gangs by Amber, Bev, Chantel, Jazmyne, Faith, Jorgina and Robert Henry
- Regime of Obstruction, edited by William K. Carroll
Learning Book of the Year:
- Dying in Good Hands by Christine Sutherland
- Ethics for the Practice of Psychology in Canada, Third Edition by Derek Truscott and Kenneth H.Crook
- Introduction to Early Childhood Education and Care by Carole Massing, Mary Lynne Matheson
The winners of the 2022 Alberta Book Publishing Awards — including those in the Children's & Young Adult Book of the Year, Publisher of the Year Award and Lifetime Achievement in Publishing Award categories — will be announced at an event in Calgary on Sept. 16, 2022.