Ryga Award going strong
December 15th, 2017
The George Ryga Award is annually presented to a B.C. writer who has achieved an outstanding degree of social awareness in a new book published in the preceding calendar year.
This award is sponsored by Pacific BookWorld News Society, Yosef Wosk and Vancouver Public Library.
2017 recipient Wade Davis
Last year’s winner was Wade Davis for Wade Davis Photographs (D&M). Shortlisted were Stephen Collis for My Blockadia (Talonbooks) and Eric Jamieson for The Native Voice: The Story of How Maisie Hurley and Canada’s First Aboriginal Newspaper Changed a Nation (Caitlin).
This year the 14th annual George Ryga Award competition has attracted a record number of entries – 52 – to be judged by VPL Joe Fortes Branch library head Jane Curry; author and professor Trevor Carolan; and freelance journalist and art critic Beverly Cramp.
In keeping with George Ryga’s status as a marginalized Ukrainian Canadian who was deeply concerned with justice, the judges will select an outstanding work of both literary and social value that opens up discussion of social and cultural issues.
A public presentation ceremony is now held annually at the Vancouver Public Library in conjunction with the annual George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. The shortlist and winner are announced in the late spring of each year
Here are the contenders for the award for books published by B.C. authors in 2017.
2018 George Ryga Award Candidates
Entries compiled by Pacific BookWorld News Society
Monique Gray Smith
Monique Gray-Smith, Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation (Orca 2017).
Eden Robinson Son of a Trickster (Penguin Random House 2017).
Roger Frie, Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility after the Holocaust (Oxford University Press 2017).
Gary Geddes, Medicine Unbundled: A Journey through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care (Heritage House, 2017).
Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road (HarperCollins, 2017).
P.J. Naworynski, Against All Odd: The Untold Story of Canada’s Unlikely Hockey Heroes (Collins 2017).
Marianne Ignace and Ronald E. Ignace, Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws (McGill-Queens, 2017)
Daniel Griffin, Two Roads Home, (Freehand Books 2017). David Suzuki and Ian Hanington, Just Cool It! The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do (Greystone, 2017).
Patricia Sandberg, Sun Dogs and Yellowcake: Gunnar Mines – A Canadian Story (Cracking Stone Press 2017).
Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change (Rocky Mountain 2017).
Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson
Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson, with contribution by Wade Davis and Foreword by Gwaaganad (Diane Brown), Out of Concealment: Female Supernatural Beings of Haida Gwaii (Victoria: Heritage House, 2017).
Kallie George, Heartwood Hotel: A True Home (HarperCollins 2017), illustrated by Stephanie Graegin.
Craig McInnes, The Mighty Hughes: From Prairie Lawyer to Western Canada’s Moral Compass (Heritage 2017).
Martina Scholtens, MD, Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist: A Doctor Reflects on Ten Years at a Refugee Clinic (Brindle & Glass 2017).
Rachel Rose
Rachel Rose (editor), Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food (Anvil 2017).
Kevin Vallely, Rowing the Northwest Passage: Adventure, Fear, and Awe (Greystone 2017).
Cea Sunrise Person, Nearly Normal: Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself (HarperCollins 2017).
Gurjinder Basran, Someone You Love is Gone (Viking 2017).
Andrew Struthers
Andrew Struthers The Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Weed (Vancouver: New Star, 2017).
David Chariandy Brother (M&S 2017).
Geo Takach Tar Wars: Oil, Environment and Alberta’s Image (University of Alberta Press, 2017). Travis Lupick, Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017).
Michelle van der Merwe (editor), The Language of Family: Stories of Bonds and Belonging (Royal BC Museum 2017).
Geoff Dembicki, Are We Screwed? How A New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change (Bloomsbury 2017).
Terry Watada, The Three Pleasures (Anvil 2017).
David R. Boyd, The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution that could Save the World (ECW Press, 2017).
Jamie Reid, A Temporary Stranger: Homages, Poems, Recollections (Anvil 2017).
Thom Henley, Raven Walks around the World: An Activist’s Life (Harbour: 2017).
Howard Macdonald Stewart, Views of the Salish Sea: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Change around the Strait of Georgia (Harbour 2017).
Lily Gontard, Beyond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community (Harbour 2017), photos by Mark Kelly.
Chick Stewart with Michele Carter, It Can Be Done: An Ordinary Man’s Extraordinary Success (Harbour 2017).
Cornelia Hoogland, Trailer Park Elegy (Harbour 2017).
Mark Zuehlke, The Cinderella Campaign: First Canadian Army and the Battles for the Channel Ports (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017).
The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds…
Tom Hawthorn The Year Canadians Lost Their Minds and Found Their Country: The Centennial of 1967 (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017).
Michael Chong, Scott Simms, and Kennedy Stewart (editors) Turning Parliament Inside Out: Practical Ideas for Reforming Canada’s Democracy (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017)
John MacLachlan Gray, The White Angel (D&M 2017).
Michael V. Smith, Bad Ideas (Nightwood 2017).
Melanie Murray, Should Auld Acquaintance: Discovering the Woman Behind Robert Burns (Nightwood 2017).
Ahmad Danny Ramadan, The Clothesline Swing (Nightwood 2017).
Rodney DeCroo, Next Door to the Butcher Shop (Nightwood 2017).
Joe Denham, Landfall (Nightwood 2017).
David Doyle
David Doyle, Louis Riel: Let Justice Be Done (Ronsdale: 2017)
Judith Plant, Culture Gap and Beyond: Real Life in a New World (New Star, 2017).
Arthur Manuel with Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson, The Reconciliation Manifesto (Lorimer 2017).
Claire Sicherman, Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation (Caitlin 2017)
Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine (Caitlin 2017). Pauline Le Bel, Whale in the Door: A Community Unites to Protect B.C.’s Howe Sound (Caitlin 2017)
Nicola Peffers, Refuge in the Black Deck: The Story of Ordinary Seaman (Caitlin 2017)
Yvonne Blumer (editor), Refugium: Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin 2017)
Susan Boyd, Busted: An Illustrated History of Drug Prohibition in Canada (Fernwood 2017)
Miriam Matejova, editor, Wherever I Find Myself: Stories by Canadian Immigrant Women (Caitlin: 2017)
Miriam Matejova
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For a list of previous winners and background on George Ryga visit http://bcbookawards.ca/
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