Bill Gaston’s memoir Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood leads nominations for BC Book Prizes

Bill Gaston, whose memoir Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood was shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, leads the nominations for the BC Book Prizes, nominated for both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize.

In the non-fiction category, Gaston is up against Kate Harris, the Atlin, B.C.-based writer who recently won the Taylor Prize for her first book, Land of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road. Other nominees in that category are: Ian Hampton for Jan in 35 Pieces: A Memoir in Music; A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC by journalists Rob Shaw and Richard Zussman; and Lindsay Wong for The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family – which was also shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and is a finalist in next week’s Canada Reads competition on CBC.

The Regional Prize recognizes the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of B.C. The other nominees in this category are: Athlii Gwaii: Upholding Haida Law at Lyell Island by the Council of the Haida Nation and edited by Nika Collison Jisgang; Sarah Cox for Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand against Big Hydro; art curator Darrin Martens’s Beau Dick: Revolutionary Spirit; and Harley Rustad for Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees.

For fiction, the shortlisted books are Amber Dawn’s Sodom Road Exit; That Tiny Life by Erin Frances Fisher; We All Need to Eat by Alex Leslie, Dear Evelyn by Kathy Page; and Eden Robinson’s Trickster Drift.

Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize/The Canadian Press

The Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award recognizes the best book in terms of public appeal, initiative, design production and content. The finalists are E.J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island by Robert Amos; the children’s book One Eagle Soaring by Robert Budd and Roy Henry Vickers; 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph; Eve Lazarus’s Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer; and Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel J. McLeod.

The shortlist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize includes Quarrels by Eve Joseph; Port of Being by Shazia Hafiz Ramji; Our Familiar Hunger by Laisha Rosnau; Fred Wah and Rita Wong’s beholden, a poem as long as the river; and The Small Way by Onjana Yawnghwe.

There are two children’s categories. Nominees for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize are Very Rich by Polly Horvath, Learning to Breathe by Janice Lynn Mather, No Fixed Address by Susin Nielsen, Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke, and the flipbook The Journey Forward, A Novella on Reconciliation: When We Play Our Drums, They Sing! by Richard Van Camp and Lucy & Lola by Monique Gray Smith.

And for the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize, the nominees are The Nameless City: The Divided Earth, written and illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks; Robert Bateman: The Boy Who Painted Nature by Margriet Ruurs, illustrated by Bateman; Sir Simon: Super Scarer, written and illustrated by Cale Atkinson; Sparks! by Ian Boothby, illustrated by Nina Matsumoto; and Sterling, Best Dog Ever, written and illustrated by Aidan Cassie.

The winners will be announced at a gala on May 11 in Vancouver.

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