2024 Writer’s Trust Award Finalists
October 18th, 2024

Four BC based authors have been shortlisted for the 2024 Writer’s Trust Award, within two categories. The winners will be announced in November. Keep reading to learn about the finalists and their work.
Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
Governor General’s Award-nominated author, Sheung-King’s (at right) Batshit Seven (Penguin Canada $33.95) follows Glen Wu, also known as Glue, a disillusioned millennial teaching ESL in Hong Kong during the protests. Uninterested in his job, he spends most of his time partying and using drugs. As the city he grew up in is torn apart by political turmoil and repression, Glue’s life spirals further into disconnection. He drifts through confrontations with a drug dealer friend, tensions with his sister, a dysfunctional relationship, and reflections on colonialism. The novel highlights his inner conflict as Hong Kong faces repression, leading Glue to an unsettling and violent conclusion. Combining millennial apathy with the personal and political collapse of a city, Batshit Seven critiques imperialism and modern consumer culture while capturing the emotional complexities of a generation.
Balsillie Prize for Public Policy

Gregor Craigie
CBC Radio host and journalist Gregor Craigie examines Canada’s worsening housing crisis and offers global solutions to address it in his book, Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis (Random House Canada $25.00). Despite housing prices stabilizing in 2023, a severe shortage remains, with an estimated shortfall of 3.5 million homes by 2030. Rising interest rates have intensified the strain on both buyers and renters. Craigie, who lives in Victoria—one of Canada’s most expensive housing markets—shares insights from over 15 years of interviews with renters, homeowners, and the homeless, revealing the human impact of the crisis. He also explores successful housing models from cities like Tokyo, Berlin and Helsinki, highlighting strategies that could work in Canada. With urgency, Craigie calls for innovative solutions combining business and social efforts, requiring collaboration across all levels of government. His book offers hope that Canada can overcome its housing challenges through coordinated action and fresh approaches.

Christopher Pollon
Published in partnership with David Suzuki Institute, Christopher Pollon explores the urgent and complex future of mining, focusing on the race to extract dwindling supplies of essential metals like copper, nickel, and silver in Pitfall: The Race to Mine the World’s Most Vulnerable Places (Greystone $39.95). These metals are crucial for transitioning to clean energy and building electric vehicles and green infrastructure. However, the extraction process is becoming more polluting, and much of the mining occurs in the global south, leading to increased social conflict, particularly among Indigenous communities. Pollon traces the rise of transnational mining companies from the 1960s, showing their dominance in Latin America, Africa and Asia. He warns of a disturbing future where we exploit even deeper resources, including ocean beds and asteroids, without regard for environmental or human rights.

Wendy H. Wong
Wendy H. Wong’s book, We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (The MIT Press $28.60) calls for extending human rights to account for the impact of data in our lives. In today’s data-driven world, Wong argues that our autonomy, dignity and equality are at risk as data collection and tracking become pervasive. She emphasizes that we are not just passive sources of data but active participants, and current policies fail to reflect this reality. Wong explores key issues such as data rights, facial recognition technology, and posthumous rights, advocating for a right to data literacy. She insists we must act as stakeholders to hold tech companies and governments accountable. Drawing parallels to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Wong envisions a new framework to protect human rights in the digital age, ensuring that data serves humanity rather than exploits it.
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ABOUT THE AWARD
Writer’s Trust Award celebrates the year’s best Canadian writing, giving our seven literary prizes worth more than $330,000.
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