Mark Medley National Post | Nov 12, 2012 8:30 PM ET | Last Updated: Nov 12, 2012 10:16 PM ET
When Candace Savage finally published A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape, earlier this year, she went back and looked at the original contract for the book: “I signed it eight years ago. Isn’t that outrageous?
“The contract was signed on a gentleman and ladies’ handshake,” she says, of the deal made with Rob Sanders of Greystone Books. “I really didn’t understand what the book was about yet. And I remember going through these successive apologies because it still wasn’t done. And he just said, ‘I’m a very patient man.’ Thank goodness for that.”
It was worth the wait. Savage has won this year’s Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. The prize, now in its second year, awards $60,000 to the winner, making it Canada’s most lucrative literary prize for a work of non-fiction.
The win comes less than a month after Savage’s co-publisher, Greystone Books, an imprint of D&M Publishers, entered bankruptcy protection. The book is co-published by the David Suzuki Foundation.
Savage first met Sanders, Greystone’s publisher, when they were both students at the University of Alberta. “And then when I ready to start making my first, very, very timid steps as a writer, there he was.” He was running a trade publisher at the time, Prairie Books; she subsequently worked for him as an editor. “I remember he said, years ago, that he wanted to be the old fashioned kind of publisher, that publishes authors. And he has stood beside me the entire time.”
A Geography of Blood is a memoir, history and travelogue rolled into one; a meditation and exploration of southwestern Saskatchewan, and particularly the small town of Eastend, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer, Wallace Stegner, was raised.
In their citation, the jury described A Geography of Blood as “a part memoir, part history, part geological survey, part lament, part condemnation of the accepted myth of the settlement of the Western Plains, and above all, a haunting meditation on time and place.”
This year’s jury was comprised of former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario James Bartleman, journalist Marni Jackson, Maclean’s columnist Barbara Amiel Black, CTV broadcaster Seamus O’Regan and writer Charlotte Gill, whose book Eating Dirt was a finalist for last year’s award.
“I found it incredibly moving and painful at the same time,” says Gill. “It was really striking from the very first read. And then on subsequent reads, I think we knew that it was going to end up somewhere near the top.”
Savage, who lives in Saskatchewan, is the award- winning author of more than 25 books about nature, cultural history and for children, including Prairie: A Natural History, Curious by Nature: One Woman’s Exploration of the Natural World and Bees: Nature’s Little Wonders.
The other finalists were Kamal Al-Solaylee for his memoir Intolerable; Modris Eksteins for Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age; Taras Grescoe for Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile; and JJ Lee for The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit. They each receive $5,000.
For the second consecutive year the ceremony was held at Koerner Hall in downtown Toronto. Albert Schultz, the founding artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre Company, served as host, and the finalists’ work was read by playwright Kawa Ada, actor and playwright Ins Choi, actor Gordon Pinsent, CBC host Shelagh Rogers and Toronto councillor Adam Vaughan.
Charles Foran won last year’s prize for Mordecai: The Life and Times.
“The contract was signed on a gentleman and ladies’ handshake,” she says, of the deal made with Rob Sanders of Greystone Books. “I really didn’t understand what the book was about yet. And I remember going through these successive apologies because it still wasn’t done. And he just said, ‘I’m a very patient man.’ Thank goodness for that.”
It was worth the wait. Savage has won this year’s Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. The prize, now in its second year, awards $60,000 to the winner, making it Canada’s most lucrative literary prize for a work of non-fiction.
The win comes less than a month after Savage’s co-publisher, Greystone Books, an imprint of D&M Publishers, entered bankruptcy protection. The book is co-published by the David Suzuki Foundation.
Savage first met Sanders, Greystone’s publisher, when they were both students at the University of Alberta. “And then when I ready to start making my first, very, very timid steps as a writer, there he was.” He was running a trade publisher at the time, Prairie Books; she subsequently worked for him as an editor. “I remember he said, years ago, that he wanted to be the old fashioned kind of publisher, that publishes authors. And he has stood beside me the entire time.”
A Geography of Blood is a memoir, history and travelogue rolled into one; a meditation and exploration of southwestern Saskatchewan, and particularly the small town of Eastend, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer, Wallace Stegner, was raised.
In their citation, the jury described A Geography of Blood as “a part memoir, part history, part geological survey, part lament, part condemnation of the accepted myth of the settlement of the Western Plains, and above all, a haunting meditation on time and place.”
This year’s jury was comprised of former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario James Bartleman, journalist Marni Jackson, Maclean’s columnist Barbara Amiel Black, CTV broadcaster Seamus O’Regan and writer Charlotte Gill, whose book Eating Dirt was a finalist for last year’s award.
“I found it incredibly moving and painful at the same time,” says Gill. “It was really striking from the very first read. And then on subsequent reads, I think we knew that it was going to end up somewhere near the top.”
Savage, who lives in Saskatchewan, is the award- winning author of more than 25 books about nature, cultural history and for children, including Prairie: A Natural History, Curious by Nature: One Woman’s Exploration of the Natural World and Bees: Nature’s Little Wonders.
The other finalists were Kamal Al-Solaylee for his memoir Intolerable; Modris Eksteins for Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age; Taras Grescoe for Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile; and JJ Lee for The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit. They each receive $5,000.
For the second consecutive year the ceremony was held at Koerner Hall in downtown Toronto. Albert Schultz, the founding artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre Company, served as host, and the finalists’ work was read by playwright Kawa Ada, actor and playwright Ins Choi, actor Gordon Pinsent, CBC host Shelagh Rogers and Toronto councillor Adam Vaughan.
Charles Foran won last year’s prize for Mordecai: The Life and Times.
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