Member news: June 2012

Prairie Provinces branch member Astrid Blodgett will have her story “Ice Break” included in this year’s The Journey Prize Stories. For more than 20 years The Journey Prize Stories, published by McClelland & Stewart, has been one of the most prestigious anthologies in the country. One of the 12 writers featured this year will receive the $10,000 Journey Prize, the most significant monetary award given in Canada for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work-in-progress.

Cynthia Dusseault (Prairie Provinces branch) has received the Professional Writers Association of Canada’s Larry Jackson Award, which is the equivalent of Editors Canada’s Lee D’Anjou Volunteer of the Year Award.

Toronto branch member Diya Lim is the winner of the Prix littéraire Henriette-Major 2011, a literary award for unpublished writers organized by Dominique et compagnie (a children’s book publisher in Quebec). Diya’s first book is due to be published in fall 2012, as an illustrated chapter book. Furthermore, Diya has recently signed a contract with Les Éditions L’Interligne (a publisher in Ontario) for another children’s novel containing two fantasy stories. This second book is due to be published in spring 2013.

Rosemary Shipton, Toronto branch, received a glowing acknowledgement from Richard Gwyn for her editing of his book Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life. Our Times (Random House Canada, 2011). This book won two awards and was shortlisted for two others. Wins: the 2012 J.W. Dafoe Book Prize ($10,000), given annually to the best book on Canada, Canadians and/or Canada’s place in the world, and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for the best political writing published in 2011 (worth $25,000). Shortlists: the Writers’ Trust Prize for nonfiction and the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. Rosemary notes as well that the first volume of this biography, published in 2007, won the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction. “So,” she says, “Richard and I seem to make a good pair!”


Editors Canada Member News is where we share information about members and affiliates who win awards, publish books and make their mark in other important ways.

Do you have an achievement you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you! Send your news to the member news coordinator. Each news item will be posted once on the website and once in Editors Canada’s e-news update.

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