Toronto-based author M.G. Vassanji is one of the four Canadian authors on the shortlist for the 2024 Balsillie Prize for public policy.

Established in 2021, the annual $60,000 award recognizes the best nonfiction book that advances public discourse relevant to Canadians.

Vassanji is nominated for his book Nowhere, Exactly, which examines the challenges around the idea of home, belonging and identity from an immigrant perspective where home is not the country of origin nor the place of resettlement. In Nowhere, Exactly, Vassanji reflects on feelings of guilt, loss and gain that come with emigration and the ways that communities and their histories shape individuals.

Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. His original works include Everything There Is, A Delhi Obsession and The Book of Secrets. He was the recipient of the 1994 and 2003 Giller Prize for best work of fiction for his books The Books of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. He also won the Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction for his book A Place Within.

His novel Nostalgia was defended on Canada Reads in 2017.

The other nominees are Gregor Craigie, Christopher Pollon and Wendy H. Wong.

Craigie, a CBC journalist in Victoria, is recognized for his book Our Crumbling Foundation, which looks at the housing crisis in Canada through interviews with renters, owners and homeless people, in order to find solutions.

Pollon, an independent journalist based in Vancouver, is shortlisted for Pitfall. The book explores the past, present and future of mining and the cost that it's had on the environment and the people who have worked in the industry. It charts a change of course that will ensure that we don't repeat the mistakes the industry has made in the past.

Wong, a professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, is nominated for We, The Data, which was also a finalist for the 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize. It highlights how pervasive data collection and tracking are in everyday life. Laying the foundation for future policy, We, The Data calls for human rights to be extended to encourage human potential when data threatens to complicate how we progress.

The 2024 jury was composed of Toronto author and physician Samantha Nutt, president of the Canada School of Public Service Taki Sarantakis and Sweden-based digital strategist and research consultant Scott Young.

The four finalists were selected by the jury from 58 titles submitted by 36 publishers. The winner will be announced on Nov. 26.

Each finalist will receive $5,000.

The prize is funded by the Balsillie Family Foundation, as part of its $3 million donation to Writers' Trust to support Canadian literature. It's the largest award of its kind for Canadian public policy titles.

The foundation also funded the $60,000 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, renamed in 2021 after Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, two of the founders of Writers' Trust of Canada.

The Writers' Trust of Canada is an organization that supports Canadian writers through literary awards, fellowships, financial grants, mentorships and more.

It also gives out 11 prizes in recognition of the year's best in fiction, nonfiction and short story, as well as mid-career and lifetime achievement awards. The finalists for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize were announced on Sept. 25. The shortlist for the 2024 Hilary Weston Writers' Prize for nonfiction was revealed on Sept. 18.

Previous Balsillie Prize winners include Innovation in Real Places by Dan Breznitz and Dream States by John Lorinc.