Sheila Heti and Gabor Maté are among the winners of the 2023 Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature.

The Vine Awards honour the best Canadian Jewish authors as well as non-Jewish writers who work with Jewish content in the categories of fiction, history, non-fiction, young adult and children's literature and poetry.

Each winning author will receive $10,000. Awards in all categories are given annually, with the exception of poetry, which is awarded every three years.

Heti won the fiction prize for her novel, Pure Colour, in which Mira, her protagonist, wrestles with art, love, death and the nature of creation. The novel tells the story of Mira's life, from beginning to end. It also won the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.

Heti's sharp prose carries the reader through an otherworldly, almost biblical narrative," wrote the jury, consisting of professor Alain Goldschlager and writers Sidura Ludwig and Syd Zolf, in a press statement. "This fearless and quirky novel grapples with significant questions about faith, our place in the universe, and how we perceive the world."

Heti is a noted Canadian playwright and author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction whose work has been translated in over a dozen languages. Her play All Our Happy Days are Stupid appeared on stages in New York and Toronto and her book How Should a Person Be? was a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel Motherhood was on the shortlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Maté, a Canadian physician, and his son Daniel, a composer and lyricist, won the nonfiction prize for their book The Myth of Normal. The book examines the trauma of his life and the social implications of health in a toxic world.

"Maté and Maté offer new ways of bearing witness to personal and social diseases," wrote the jury. "The book covers topics from brain chemistry to rethinking what is deemed 'normal.' It's beautifully written and changes the modern-day discussion on health and healing."

LISTEN |Gabor and Daniel Maté on how our 'toxic culture' harms our health:

Media | Gabor and Daniel Maté on how our ‘toxic culture’ harms our health

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Michigan-based writer and scholar Jeffery Veidlinger won the history category for his book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust.

The poetry category winner is Adam Sol's Broken Dawn Blessings and the young adult/children winner is Cary Fagan's Water, Water.

Originally established in 2004, the Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are presented by the Koffler Centre of the Arts and are supported by the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation.