Kyo Maclear has won the 2018 Trillium Book Award for her non-fiction book Birds Art Life. The $20,000 annual prize recognizes excellence in writing by authors in Ontario. The award was announced at a gala event in Toronto on June 21, 2018.

Maclear is a Toronto-based novelist and author of children's books. Birds Art Life is a personal memoir that examines themes of love and regret, as well as the life lessons she learned while birdwatching in an urban landscape.

There were six books — four works of fiction and two non-fiction — on the Trillium Book Award's English-language shortlist for 2018.

Other finalists included Cherie Dimaline for The Marrow Thieves, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for This Accident of Being Lost and James Maskalyk for his memoir Life on the Ground Floor.

Catherine Hernandez's debut novel Scarborough and Rebecca Rosenblum's thriller So Much Love rounded out the 2018 nominee list.

Pino Coluccio's Class Clown won the $10,000 Trillium Book Award for poetry. The collection features short and witty poems about love, death and the passage of time.

Previous Trillium Book Award winners include Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Soraya Peerbaye, Austin Clarke, Thomas King and Michael Ondaatje.