Edugyan, deWitt shortlisted for Governor General literary award

Edugyan, deWitt shortlisted for Governor General literary award

Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press
Oct 11, 2011

The celebration continues for Canadian authors Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt.

The authors are now in the running for an astonishing four literary awards apiece this fall. The latest nomination came this morning when both made the short list for the Governor General's Literary Awards.

Victoria-based Edugyan made the cut for Half-Blood Blues, about black jazz musicians trying to survive in Europe during the Second World War

DeWitt is a nominee for The Sisters Brothers, a comical western set amid the 1850s California gold rush.

Both books are already finalists for Britain's Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Toronto author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis is also on the Governor General's list with The Free World, which is also a finalist for the Giller. Other fiction authors up for this year's G-G literary awards include Edmonton's Marina Endicott for The Little Shadows and Alexi Zentner for Touch.

This is the 75th anniversary of the awards, which are administered by the Canada Council for the Arts and honour literature in seven categories, in both official languages.

Winners will be announced on Nov. 15.

A selection of English-language nominees for this year's Governor General's Literary Awards:

Fiction

David Bezmozgis, The Free World (HarperCollins Publishers)

Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brother (House of Anansi Press)

Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers)

Marina Endicott, The Little Shadow (Doubleday Canada)

Alexi Zentner, Touch (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)

Non-fiction

Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life & Times (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)

Nathan M. Greenfield, The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45 (HarperCollins Publishers)

Richard Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867-1891 (Random House Canada)

J.J. Lee, The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit (McClelland & Stewart)

Andrew Nikiforuk, Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests (Greystone Books)

Poetry

Michael Boughn, Cosmographia: A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic (BookThug)

Kate Eichhorn, Fieldnotes, A Forensic (BookThug)

Phil Hall, Killdeer (BookThug)

Garry Thomas Morse, Discovery Passages (Talonbooks)

Susan Musgrave, Origami Dove (McClelland & Stewart)