Dionne Brand, Bertrand Bickersteth among Alberta Book Publishing Award finalists
Jane van Koeverden | | Posted: July 8, 2021 6:44 PM | Last Updated: July 8, 2021
Poets Dionne Brand and Bertrand Bickersteth are among the 2021 Alberta Book Publishing Award nominees, which annually celebrate the province's best books of the year across 13 categories.
Brand is a finalist in the Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year category. Her shortlisted book, An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading, looks back on Brand's reading history and reflects on how Black lives are restricted and oppressed in colonial narratives.
"I had a colonial education where I read all those 19th-century English novels and Elizabethan poetry," said Brand in a 2019 interview with CBC's Nantali Indongo, shortly after winning the Blue Metropolis Violet Literary Prize.
"I was curious about what literature might do to describe my own life and the lives of people who were like me. I understood its power because literature is such a seductive enterprise. Narrative is so seductive."
The Toronto-based writer is an award-winning poet, novelist and celebrated thinker. She won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Trillium Book Award for her 1997 collection Land to Light On, the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize for Ossuaries and was named to the Order of Canada in 2017. Her other books include the poetry works thirsty, The Blue Clerk and the novel What We All Long For.
Bickersteth is nominated in two categories — the Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry and Regional Book of the Year — for his debut poetry collection The Response of Weeds. The book tells stories rooted in the prairie landscape, bringing in the history of early Black settlers as well as the poet's own contemporary experiences as a Black Albertan.
"What you discover if you are a person of colour, is that the education that you get about your place — in the country and the history of the nation — omits you. I didn't know that there was such a thing as a Black history in Alberta for most of my life," said Bickersteth in an interview with The Next Chapter host Shelagh Rogers.
"My initial emotional response was irritation and anger, actually. But what it turned out to be was a way of trying to place myself within this nation, within the national narrative, as well as Western Canadian narrative as well."
Bickersteth lives in Calgary, teaches at Olds College and often writes about Black history in Western Canada. His poetry has appeared in several publications, including the Antigonish Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and the Fieldstone Review. Bickersteth made the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for the poem Wakanda, Oklahoma.
The Response of Weeds also picked up a nomination in the book design category for designer Natalie Olsen.
The winners will be announced on Sept. 17, 2021
Find a list of all the finalists below.
Trade Fiction Book of the Year:
- Humane by Anna Marie Sewell
- Goth Girls of Banff by John O'Neill
- Watershed by Doreen Vanderstoop
Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry:
- Lullabies in the Real World by Meredith Quartermain
- The Manhattan Project by Ken Hunt
- Nautilus and Bone by Lisa Richter
- The Response of Weeds by Bertrand Bickersteth
Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year:
- An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading by Dionne Brand
- Taken by the Muse by Anne Wheeler
- Mother Earth Plants for Health & Beauty by Carrie Armstrong
Speculative Fiction Book of the Year:
- Flights of Marigold by Susan Forest
- Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures edited by S.M. Beiko
- In Veritas by C.J. Lavigne
Graphic Novel of the Year:
- A Slug Story by Mandi Kujawa & Hana Kujawa, illustrated by Claude St. Aubin & Lovern Kindzierski
- Awkward Pause by Ryan Harby
- Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures edited S.M. Beiko
Children's & Young Adult Book of the Year:
- ABC Monstrosity by Shea Proulx
- A Slug Story by Mandi Kujawa & Hana Kujawa, illustrated by Claude St. Aubin & Lovern Kindzierski
- Hollow by Rhonda Parrish
- Howdy, I'm John Ware by Ayesha Clough and Hugh Rookwood
Book Illustration:
- ABC Monstrosity by Shea Proulx
- A Brush With Depth by Rick Sealock
- Plausible Wrong Answers by Tyler Perry, illustrated by Anna Navarro
Regional Book of the Year:
- Borderlands by Mark Vitaris
- Howdy, I'm John Ware by Ayesha Clough and Hugh Rookwood
- The Response of Weeds by Bertrand Bickersteth
Book Cover Design:
- The End of Me by John Gould, book cover design by Natalie Olsen
- Horseplay: My Time Undercover on the Granville Strip by Norm Boucher, book cover design by David Gee
- The Virtues of Disillusionment by Steven Heighton, book cover design by Natalie Olsen
Book Design:
- All the Feels / Tous les sens: Affect and Writing in Canada / Affet et écriture au Canada edited by Marie Carrière, Ursula Mathis-Moser and Kit Dobson, designed by Alan Brownoff
- If Sylvie Had Nine Lives by Leona Theis, designed by Natalie Olsen
- The Manhattan Project by Ken Hunt, designed by Melina Cusano
- The Response of Weeds by Bertrand Bickersteth, designed by Natalie Olsen
Scholarly & Academic Book of the Year:
- The Art of Communication in a Polarized World by Kyle Conway
- Our Whole Gwich'in Way of Life Has Changed / Gwich'in K'yuu Gwiidandài' Tthak Ejuk Gòonlih: Stories from the People of the Land by Leslie McCartney and Gwich'in Tribal Council
Learning Book of the Year:
- 25 Years of Ed Tech by Martin Weller
- The Educational Assistant's Guide to Supporting Inclusion in a Diverse Society by Carol Massing
- Gross Morphology of Common Diseases by Dr. Zu-hua Gao
- Rapid Response Guide to Opioid Emergencies by Greg Clarkes