Acclaimed writer Esi Edugyan has won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for her nonfiction book Out of the Sun.

The $5,000 prize has been given out annually since 2004. The award recognizes the best book published by a writer who lives in Victoria. Eligible books can be any genre, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Adapted from Edugyan's six-part CBC Massey Lectures, Out of the Sun explores the relationship between art and race through the lens of visual art, literature, film and her own lived experience.

Out of the Sun examines being Black and the concept of Blackness over the centuries, noting that society is worse off for not knowing the story of our past — stories that are left out of the historical record of who we are.

"I wanted to know the living, breathing people who have remained beyond our sight, occupying the shadows," Edugyan wrote in the book.

"I am not a historian, only a storyteller with an interest in overlooked narratives, and I've always been curious as to why we sideline some stories and mythologize others. What social and political instincts inform our remembering; how much are our omissions the result of apathy, of indifference?"

Out of the Sun is Edugyan's first major work of nonfiction. She is best known for her novels Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black, both of which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize: Half-Blood Blues in 2011 and Washington Black in 2018. She is also the author of the novel The Second Life of Samuel Tyne.

Writer Wendy Proverbs won the City of Victoria Children's Book Prize for her novel Aggie & Mudgy.

Established in 2008, the $5,000 prize recognizes exceptional literature for children and young adults.

Aggie & Mudgy is based on the true story of Proverbs' biological mother and aunt who were taken from their homes and forced to attend residential school. When protagonist Maddy finds an old photograph of two young Kaska Dena sisters among her grandmother's belongings, she asks her grandmother who they are. Reluctantly, Maddy's grandmother tells her the story of Aggie and Mudgy who were forced into the residential school system.

Proverbs is an author of Kaska Dena descent and a survivor of the Sixties Scoop. Aggie and Mudgy is her debut novel.

The jury members for both prizes were comprised of members of Victoria's literary arts community.

Last year's winners were Briony Penn for the biography of Indigenous leader Cecil Paul Following the Good River: The Life and Times of Wa'xaid and Leslie Gentile for the middle-grade novel Elvis, Me and the Lemonade Stand Summer.

Other past winners include Lorna Crozier for The House the Spirit Builds, Bill Gaston for A Mariner's Guide to Self Sabotage and Yasuko Thanh for Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains.