TORONTO — Oji-Cree author Joshua Whitehead is among five finalists for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Whitehead, who won acclaim for his 2018 novel “Jonny Appleseed,” made the short list for the $60,000 non-fiction award for his essay collection “Making Love With the Land,” from Knopf Canada.
Also in the running is Montreal scholar Debra Thompson’s “The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging,” a meditation on the idiosyncrasies of racism in the U.S. and Canada, published by Scribner Canada.
Other contenders include journalist Geoff Dembicki for his look at the origins of the oilsands in his native Alberta, “The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change,” published by Greystone Books, and Toronto epidemiologist Dan Werb’s account of the COVID-19 pandemic “The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure,” published by Crown.
Rounding out the short list is Mi’kmaq writer Tara McGowan-Ross’s “Nothing Will Be Different: A Memoir,” billed as a coming-of-age story about a “neurotic party girl,” published by Dundurn Press.
The winner will be announced at an in-person ceremony in Toronto on Nov. 2. Each finalist receives $5,000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 21, 2022.
