Ali Bryan and Cherie Dimaline among winners of the 2024 Alberta Book Publishing Awards
CBC Books | Posted: October 1, 2024 4:36 PM | Last Updated: October 1
Awards across 16 categories celebrate Alberta’s best books of the year
Ali Bryan and Cherie Dimaline are among the winners of the 2024 Alberta Book Publishing Awards.
The prizes, administered by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta, annually celebrate the province's best books of the year across 16 categories.
Bryan won the Trade Fiction Book of the Year category for Coq, a cross-country family drama that explores the roles each member takes up in grief after loss and later, in acceptance. Claudia is used to juggling many family problems at once, whether it's the unruliness of her teenaged children, her brother's broken marriage or her ex-partner's desire to get back together.
What Claudia finds she can't tolerate is her father remarrying ten years after her mother's death. This change prompts the family to take a trip to Paris to reconcile their differences. However, things quickly go astray and the trip that is meant to bring them together could be what pulls them apart.
Bryan is a writer from Nova Scotia now based in Alberta. Her first novel, Roost, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. Her second novel, The Figgs, was shortlisted for Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2019. Her novel The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships was released in 2023.
Bryan was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2014 and in 2010. She was also a reader for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize.
An Anthology of Monsters by Dimaline won in the Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year category.
In An Anthology of Monsters, Dimaline explores her lexperience with anxiety and how the stories we tell ourselves can help us reshape the ways in which we think, cope and survive. She uses examples from her books, her mère and her own life to reveal how to collect and curate stories to elicit difficult and beautiful conversations. She also reflects on how family and community can be a source of strength and a place of refuge.
Cherie Dimaline is a bestselling Métis author best known for her YA novel The Marrow Thieves. The Marrow Thieves, was named one of Time magazine's top 100 YA novels of all time and was championed by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018. Her other books include VenCo, Red Rooms, The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, A Gentle Habit and Empire of Wild.
You can find the full list of winners below:
- Children's & Young Adult Book of the Year: Flip Flop Flapjack by Brenda Joyce Leahy, illustrated by Melissa Bruglemans-LaBelle
- Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year: An Anthology of Monsters by Cherie Dimaline
- Learning Book of the Year: Last But Not Least by Leslie Vermeer
- Mystery and Thriller Book of the Year: Secrets of Jarrow by Bill Slavin
- Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry: Muster Points by Lucas Crawford
- Douglas Barbour Award for Speculative Fiction: Super-Earth Mother by Guy Immega
- Scholarly & Academic Book of the Year: The Canadian Mountain Assessment by Graham McDowell, Madison Stevens, Shawn Marshall, et al.
- Graphic Novel of the Year: Secrets of Jarrow written and illustrated by Bill Slavin
- Trade Fiction Book of the Year: Coq by Ali Bryan
- Regional Book of the Year: Reimagining Fire: The Future of Energy edited by Eveline Kolijn
- Book Cover Design: Whistle at Night and They Will Come by Alex Soop, book cover design by Austin Andrews
- Book Design: Indigiqueerness by Joshua Whitehead, in dialogue with Angie Abdou, book cover design by Brnesh Berhe, interior design by Natalie Olsen
- Book Illustration: Secrets of Jarrow by Bill Slavin
- Mel Hurtig Publisher of the Year: Laberinto Press
- Special Achievements in Publishing Award: Kate Edwards, CEO of Access Copyright
The winners, along with those of the Mystery & Thriller Book of Year Award, Lois Hole Award for Editorial Excellence and Special Achievement in Publishing Award, were announced at a ceremony at the Varscona Theatre in Edmonton.