Canada’s Most Prestigious Non-Fiction Award Has A New Jury

RBC Taylor Prize Announces New Jury for 2018

The Trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are pleased to announce that the jurors for the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize are: Christine Elliott, Anne Giardini, and James Polk.

Christine Elliott

Christine Elliott is Ontario’s first-ever Patient Ombudsman and has been an advocate for vulnerable people for many years. Ms. Elliott has served as a volunteer with numerous community organizations, including the Grandview Children’s Centre and Durham Mental Health Services. A lawyer by profession, she was also a longtime Progressive Conservative MPP (2006 to 2015) representing her home riding of Whitby-Oshawa.

Anne Giardini

Anne Giardini, O.C., Q.C., is an author, board director and the 11^th Chancellor of Simon Fraser University. She has published two novels, The Sad Truth About Happiness and Advice for Italian Boys. In 2016, together with her son Nicholas, Anne Giardini published Startle and Illuminate, a book of writing advice from her mother, the late Canadian author Carol Shields. Giardini has been Chair of the Vancouver International Writers Festival, and a board member of the Writers’ Trust of Canada and PEN Canada.

James Polk

James Polk was the long time editorial director of House of Anansi Press and edited two books by Charles Taylor, as well as work by Margaret Atwood, George Grant, Northrop Frye, and many others. With a literature PhD he has taught at Harvard, Idaho, Ryerson and Alberta, and has written a comic novel, a stage comedy about Canadian publishing, articles, short stories, and criticism about Canadian writers and writing. As an advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Culture, he worked on grants for theatre and books, developed a tax credit for publishers and remodelled the Trillium Book Prize to include Franco Ontarian writing. He lives in Toronto and, trained as a pianist, still practices daily, playing classics and show-tunes in seclusion.

Noreen Taylor, Prize Founder and Chair of the Charles Taylor Foundation, remarked: “Literary non-fiction is the best medium for our nation’s top authors to examine the world beyond the recording of facts and a parade of data. Our esteemed jury will read through 150+ entries and rigorously debate titles to be included on the prize longlist announced in December. Readers across the country look forward with great anticipation to the jury’s selections for the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize.”

Key Dates: The Longlist will be shared on Wednesday, December 6, 2017; the Shortlist will be announced at a news conference on Wednesday, January 10, 2018; and the winner revealed at a gala luncheon on Monday February 26, 2018.

The RBC Taylor Prize recognizes excellence in Canadian non-fiction writing and emphasizes the development of the careers of the authors it celebrates.

About The RBC Taylor Prize:

Established in 1998 by the trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation and first awarded in 2000, 2018 marks the seventeenth awarding of the RBC Taylor Prize, which commemorates Charles Taylor’s pursuit of excellence in the field of literary non-fiction. Awarded to the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception, the Prize consists of $30,000 for the winner and $5,000 for each of the remaining finalists. All authors are presented with a custom leather bound version of their shortlisted book at the awards ceremony.

The Prize provides all of the finalists with promotional support to help all of the nominated books to stand out in the media, bookstores, and libraries.

Earlier this year, Ross King won the 2017 RBC Taylor Prize for his book Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Liliespublished by Bond Street Books.

Mr. King selected Cassi Smith as the 2017 recipient of the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award. This award featuring a $10,000 cash award, and mentorship from the naming author was established in 2013 to provide recognition and assistance to a Canadian published author who is working on a significant writing project in literary non-fiction. Ms. Smith, a Saskatchewan based graduate student, is working on a collection of non-fiction short stories based on her interviews with Saskatchewan’s First Nations Elders.

The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are: Michael Bradley, Vijay Parmar, David Staines, Edward Taylor, Nadina Taylor, and Noreen Taylor. The Executive Director is Su Hutchinson.

The presenting sponsor of the RBC Taylor Prize is RBC Wealth Management. Its media sponsors are The Globe and Mail, Cision, The Huffington Post Canada, Maclean’s magazine, Quill & Quire magazine; its in-kind sponsors are Ben McNally Books, Event Source, IFOA, The Omni King Edward Hotel, and the Toronto Public Library Board.

To download high-resolution images of the trustees and the jury

please go to: www.rbctaylorprize.ca/2018/2018_trustees_and_jury.zip

For general information about the Prize please go to: www.rbctaylorprize.ca.

Follow the RBC Taylor Prize on Twitter at www.twitter.com/taylorprize

Follow the RBC Taylor Prize on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RBCTaylorPrize

— 30 —

For further information:

Media contact: Stephen Weir & Associates

Stephen Weir: 416-489-5868 | cell: 416-801-3101 | stephen@stephenweir.com

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
http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/2011/hr_images/2011_j_neil_bissoondath_hr.jpg
http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/2011/hr_images/2011_j_eva_marie_kroller_hr.jpg
http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/2011/hr_images/2011_j_david_macfarlane_hr.jpg

Photographs: Top - Neil Bissoondath.
Lower Left - Eva Marie Kroller.
Lower Right = David Macfarlane