The Canadian Authors Association (CAA) released the shortlists for its annual literary awards on Tuesday. With emerging writers from across the country to select from, Newfoundland and Labrador's Chad Pelley ("Away From Everywhere") has been named to the shortlist for the emerging author award.
"This one is huge for me because it's national in scope. The other lists that I've been on, the other awards that I've been nominated for have been Newfoundland-based or maybe even Atlantic Canadian, but this is a national award and ... because there's awards like the MOSAID fiction award associated with it, people are going to scroll down to the bottom of the page and see what the other awards are," Pelley said, when contacted by The Telegram following the announcement.
In addition to Pelley, two other authors from this province have made the shortlists in other categories. Michael Crummey ("Galore") has been nominated for the association's fiction award and Tom Dawe has been shortlisted for poetry for "Where Genesis Begins."
For the BookLand Press Emerging Writer CAA?Award, Pelley is joined on the shortlist by Jesse Patrick Ferguson, author of "Harmonics," and Rachelle Delaney, author of "The Ship of Lost Souls." In 2009, the award went to James Cummins for "Ambrosia: About a Culture."
For the MOSAID?Technologies Award for Fiction, Crummey is joined by Annabel Lyon for "The Golden Mean" and Ian Weir for "Daniel O'Thunder."
Last year, the award was presented to Nino Ricci for "The Origin of Species."
Crummey's book has already been named a Governor General's Literary Award finalist and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean).
Recently named poet laureate for the City of St. John's and winner of a 2010 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for "Moocher In the Lun," Dawe's work for "Where Genesis Begins" is nominated along with Susan Musgrave for "Obituary of Light: the Sangan River Meditations" and Joan Crate for "subUrban Legends."
The award went to Vancouver's Elise Partridge in 2009, for "Chameleon Hours."
The CAA?Awards were started in 1975 and recognize writers who "achieve excellence without sacrificing popular appeal."According to the Canadian Authors Association, the shortlists were created from the approximately 300 nominations entered for this year's CAA?Literary Awards.
The CAA Awards will be presented at the association's literary awards banquet on June 26, at the Harbour Towers Hotel in Victoria, B.C. The banquet will be part of the 2010 CanWrite! Conference, running June 24 to June 27.
afitzpatrick@thetelegram.com
Weblink
www.canauthors.org/awards/awards.html
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