Gary Barwin and Rebecca Clifford among 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award winners
Vicky Qiao | | Posted: October 25, 2021 5:14 PM | Last Updated: October 25, 2021
The awards celebrate outstanding Jewish writing by Canadian authors
Ontario authors Gary Barwin and Rebecca Clifford are two of the six winners of the 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Awards.
The awards annually honour books with Jewish themes written by Canadian authors in the categories of fiction, biography, poetry, children and youth, scholarship and Holocaust.
Barwin won the fiction genre for Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted.
Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted is a novel that explores genocide, persecution, colonialism and masculinity. The protagonist Motl is a middle-aged, poor, nerdy, Jewish man who had his balls shot off as a youth in the First World War. He lives a quiet life at home with his shrewd and shrewish mom, losing himself in the masculine fantasy world of cowboy novels — novels equally loved by Hitler, whose troops are out to exterminate people like Motl.
Barwin is a writer, composer, visual and multidisciplinary artist. His first novel, Yiddish for Pirates, won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and Canadian Jewish Literary Award in 2016. Barwin also wrote the poetry collections No TV for Woodpeckers and For It Is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe. He lives in Hamilton, Ont.
Clifford's history book Survivors won the scholarship award.
Survivors is a written account drawn from archives and interviews. Clifford documents the lives of 100 Jewish children through their adulthood and into old age. The book explores the long-term impact of the Holocaust on the survivors — often branded "the lucky ones" — and how they had to struggle to survive at all. The book is also a finalist for the 2021 Cundill History Prize.
Clifford is a professor of Transnational and European History at the University of Durham. Born in Kingston, Ont., she studied at McGill, Queen's and the University of Toronto, before moving to Oxford for her doctoral degree. She has lived in the U.K. since.
You can find the winners for the other genres below.
- Biography: Plunder by Menachem Kaiser
- Poetry: Nautilus and Bone by Lisa Richter
- Children and youth: Osnat and Her Dove by Sigal Samuel
- Holocaust: The Light of Days by Judy Batalion
"The awards program enriches and promotes Canadian Jewish writing and culture, enabling a better understanding of our collective past, our shared present and the world of the future," said jury chair Edward Trapunski in a statement.
The awards are supported by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University.
WATCH | The 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Awards ceremony: