Thomas W. Laqueur, David Wootton and Andrea Wulf on Cundill Shortlist 2016

 SHORT LIST ANNOUNCED FOR

2016 CUNDILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE

Three books to compete for $75,000 (US) grand prize

                    

MONTREAL— October 7, 2016—Today the jury for the world’s most lucrative award for historical non-fiction writing announced this year's short list. Antonia Maioni, Dean of McGill University’s Faculty of Arts and Chair of the Cundill Prize, said, “With this year's finalists for the Cundill Prize in History, the jury has identified three books that combine tremendous erudition, insight and élan. These are books that engage and hold their readers' attention from the first page to the last.” Now in its ninth year, the Cundill Prize features a grand prize of $75,000 (US) and two Recognition of Excellence prizes of $10,000 (US) each.

The winner of the grand prize will be announced at a gala awards ceremony in Toronto on Thursday, November 17, at the Shangri-La Hotel.

The three finalists are:

• Thomas W. Laqueur - The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton University Press)
• David Wootton - The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (HarperCollins)
• Andrea Wulf- The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World (Alfred A. Knopf, John Murray Publishers)

This year’s short list was chosen by the Cundill jury, which included Timothy Brook, Republic of China Chair, University of British Columbia; John Darwin, Professor of Global and Imperial History and Director, Oxford Centre for Global History, University of Oxford; and Anna Porter, Co-founder, Key Porter Books and author (Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy, The Ghosts of Europe).

About the Prize: The Cundill Prize is the world’s most important international prize for non-fiction historical literature. It was established in 2008 by McGill alumnus F. Peter Cundill, who passed away in January 2011. The prize is administered by McGill University’s Dean of Arts, with assistance from the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC), and is awarded annually to an individual who has published a book that has made a profound literary, social, and academic impact in the area of history.

For more information on the Cundill Prize: www.cundillprize.com

Follow us on Twitter: @CundillPrize

Short-listed authors are available for comment and interview. For further information, please contact:

Amirah El-Safty, Partnerships & Marketing Manager

amirah.el-safty@thewalrus.ca

 416.971.5004 ext. 253

Cynthia Lee, Senior Communications Officer

McGill University

cynthia.lee@mcgill.ca

514-398-6754

If you are in Washington DC this weekend - Two cutting edge literary voices discuss Writers as cartographers

The Potter’s House Café and Bookstore

Author Talk: Writers as cartographers with Christine Fischer Guy and Lana Pesch at Potter’s House Café and Bookstore in Washington, DC

 

Border crossings: where are the boundaries of fiction?

 

Fischer (left) and Pesch (right)

 

Washington, DC – October 5^th, 2016 - Join authors Christine Fischer Guy and Lana Pesch on Saturday, October 8^th as they will consider the idea: Writers as cartographers of the self in relation to their latest works, The Umbrella Mender and Moving Parts. Unfamiliar landscapes give their characters the chance to map new territories of the self, a place to explore, reimagine and reconsider identity.

 

DATE:             October 8^th, 2016

TIME:              2:00 – 4:00 pm ET

PLACE:           The Potter’s House Café and Bookstore, 1658 Columbia Road, Northwest, Washington, DC

 

The Author Talk will be moderated by Jillian Kitchener, Video Producer at Reuters.

About Christine Fischer Guy: http://www.christinefischerguy.com

The award-winning journalist’s debut novel, The Umbrella Mender, was published in September 2014 with Wolsak & Wynn (Buckrider Books). Her fiction has appeared in Canadian and US journals and has been nominated for the Writer’s Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and the Pushcart Prize. She contributes to the LA Review of Books, The Millions, Hazlitt, and Ryeberg.com and teaches creative writing at the School for Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto.

About The Umbrella Mender:

Young nurse Hazel McPherson is drawn to the north to fight the tuberculosis epidemic that rages among first nations people, but what she finds there—about herself and what she believes—becomes a secret she keeps for 60 years.

Author Alissa York says The Umbrella Mender is “a moving mediation on human frailty, a sensitive portrait of conflicting cultures brought together in an uneasy truce, and a heartbreaking tale of unsanctioned love.”

About Lana Pesch: www.lanapesch.com

Toronto based author, producer and communications consultant is an alumnus of the Banff Wired Writing Studio. Her first book, Moving Parts was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2015. Her writing has appeared in ELLE Canada, Taddle Creek and Little Bird Stories: Volumes I and II. She was longlisted for the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize and won the Random House of Canada Creative Writing Award at the University of Toronto in 2012. She was a reader for the 2016 CBC Creative non-fiction prize and teaches The Story Intensive for Sarah Selecky’s Story Is a State of Mind School.

About Moving Parts:

Equal parts insightful and heartbreaking, Moving Parts is a provocative collection of deeply imagined, darkly funny stories. Unconventional settings range from a hospital waiting room to a Cessna cockpit; the interrogation room of an Arizona prison to Interstate 10 East outside of Pensacola.

Author Arjun Basu calls it “Witty, moving, urbane, and thoroughly modern, Moving Parts is a knockout collection. A hip cross-country tour of today’s North America."

For further information:

For appearances and interviews with Lana Pesch please contact: lana.pesch@newswire.caor Cynara Geissler, Marketing Manager, Arsenal Pulp Press, tel: (604) 687-4233

For appearances and interviews with Christine Fischer Guy please contact:christine@christinefischerguy.com or Shaun Bradley at shaun@transatlanticagency.com, tel: (902) 693-2026