Souvankham Thammavongsa wins $20K Trillium Book Award for How to Pronounce Knife
CBC Books | | Posted: June 16, 2021 2:03 PM | Last Updated: June 16, 2021
Souvankham Thammavongsa has won the 2021 Trillium Book Award for her short story collection How to Pronounce Knife.
The $20,000 prize recognizes the best book from writers in Ontario.
In How to Pronounce Knife, the Toronto writer captures the daily lives of immigrants and refugees as well as their hopes, disappointments and pursuit of belonging.
How to Pronounce Knife also won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Thammavongsa has published four books of poetry. How to Pronounce Knife is her first work of fiction.
The other finalists for this year's prize were Craig Davidson for Cascade, Farzana Doctor for Seven, Emma Donoghue for The Pull of the Stars and A.F. Moritz for A Far As You Know.
Jody Chan won the $10,000 poetry prize for sick. The poems in sick explore loss, beauty, grief and love.
Chan is a writer currently living in Toronto. They have also published the chapbooks all our futures and haunt.
The other poetry finalists were Canisia Lubrin for The Dyzgraphxst and Irfan Ali for Accretion.
The Trillium Book Awards were established in 1987. They are presented by Ontario Creates.
The French winners were Danièle Vallée for Sept nuits dans la vie de Chérie and Éric Mathieu for Capitaine Boudu et les enfants de la Cédill.
Last year's winners were Téa Mutonji for her short story collection Shut Up, You're Pretty and Roxanna Bennett for her poetry collection unmeaningable.