The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Marks 10th Anniversary and Welcomes Back Its Inaugural Jury

The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Marks 10th Anniversary and
Welcomes Back Its Inaugural Jury

Noreen Taylor, chair of the board of trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation, announced today that the jurors for the 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction are Neil Bissoondath, Eva-Marie Kroller, and David Macfarlane. These three prominent Canadian authors all served on the jury for the first prize awarding in 2000.

About the Members of the Jury:

Neil Bissoondath’s latest novel, The Soul of All Great Designs, has just been published in Spain and France, where it was nominated for several prizes including the Prix Fémina (étranger). His novel, The Worlds Within Her, short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Prix Fémina, won Le Prix Littéraire des Amériques insulaires (France). His books include The Unyielding Clamour of the Night (The Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, 2005), Doing The Heart Good (The Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, 2002), Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (The Gordon Montador Award and le Prix Spirale de l’essai); The Innocence of Age (The Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Fiction); On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows; Digging Up the Mountains; and A Casual Brutality. In 1999, he was made Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) by York University and, in 2008, Docteur en littérature (honoris causa) by l’Université de Moncton. He was recently named Chevalier of the Ordre national du Québec by Premier Jean Charest. He has lived in Toronto and Montréal, and currently resides in Québec City, where he is professor of creative writing at Université Laval.
Eva-Marie Kroller studied at the universities of Bonn and Freiburg, Germany and, in 1978, received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, was Chair of UBC’s program in Comparative Literature from 1990 – 1995 and edited the journal Canadian Literature from 1995 – 2003. She has been visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Bonn, and her awards and distinctions include an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellowship, a Killam Research Prize, a Killam Teaching Prize, a Killam Faculty Research Fellowship, and the Distinguished Editor Award of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her most recent publications are the Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature (2004) and, co-edited with Coral Ann Howells, the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (2009). Currently writing biographies of the McIlwraith family and of Thomas B. Costain, she lives in Vancouver.
David Macfarlane’s books have been published in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. His first book, The Danger Tree, won the Canadian Author’s Association Award for non-fiction. His novel Summer Gone was nominated for The Giller Prize and won the Chapters/Books in Canada first novel award. He is the winner of numerous National Magazine Awards and a National Newspaper Award for his journalism. His play, Fishwrap, was produced at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre. In collaboration with composer Peter Skoggard, he recently completed a libretto for the opera Stratas, based on the life of the celebrated soprano, Teresa Stratas, and in 2008 he commissioned and edited a collection of essays called Toronto: A City Becoming. He wrote the text for What Will Be Has Always Been: An Illustrated History of Toronto, and he is currently at work on The Toronto Project, a collaborative online portal to Toronto and its history. Last fall he produced The Toronto Suite, a cross-genre musical creation, in association with the Via Salzburg Chamber Ensemble at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Theatre. A musician with the not-yet-too-famous rhythm and blues band, Three Chord Johnny, he lives in Toronto.

About the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction:
The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation established The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction to commemorate the life and work of the late Charles Taylor, one of Canada’s foremost essayists and a prominent member of the Canadian literary community. Charles Taylor was a foreign correspondent with The Globe and Mail and the author of four books: Radical Tories; Reporter in Red China; Six Journeys: A Canadian Pattern; and Snow Job.
The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is awarded annually to the author whose book best combines an excellent command of the English language, an elegance of style,quality of thought,and subtlety of perception.
The prize consists of $25,000 for the winning author and $2,000 for each of the remaining finalists. All of the shortlisted titles receive extensive national publicity and marketing support.
The jury will announce the shortlist for The 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction on January 5 and the winner on February 14, 2011, at events to be held in downtown Toronto.
The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are Michael Bradley (Toronto),Judith Mappin (Montreal), David Staines (Ottawa), and Noreen Taylor (Toronto).
The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is presented by the Charles Taylor Foundation with the support of its partners: Ben McNally Books, Bravo! and Book Television, CNW Group, Event Source, Indigo Books and Music, Le Meridien King Edward Hotel, Quill & Quire, The Globe and Mail, and Windfields Farm.
For more information please visit: www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca
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Photographs: Top - Neil Bissoondath.
Lower Left - Eva Marie Kroller.
Lower Right = David Macfarlane