2008 Vancouver Book Award Finalists

Author & Title Information

 

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Brad Cran and Gillian Jerome
Hope in Shadows

Arsenal Pulp Press and Pivot Legal Society, Vancouver ; photographs taken by the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, accompanied by the personal stories of the men and women behind these stunning images.

The Book: Residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are not bound by poverty or addiction but rather driven by a sense of community, kinship and, above all, hope. For each of the past five years, Pivot Legal Society’s annual Hope in Shadows photography contest has empowered residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by providing them with 200 disposable cameras to document their lives—thus giving them an artistic means to enter the ongoing and often stormy dialogue over the place they call home. Since the contest’s inception, DTES residents have taken over 20,000 images of their neighbourhood. Working with this archive, Brad Cran and Gillian Jerome have collected the personal stories behind these stunning photographs.

In surprising and astounding ways, Hope in Shadows will not only change the way you think about the Downtown Eastside and other impoverished neighbourhoods; it will also change your view of society as we know it.

Jury Comments: Our jury found this book to be gritty, honest, and respectfully created. They were moved by the great deal of optimism present in these pages as the authors document the people of a neighbourhood that has such a grim outward reputation.

Brad Cran is a poet, essayist and photographer and has been a contributing editor at Geist magazine as well as publisher of Smoking Lung Press. In 2004, Brad received a Writing and Publishing commission at the Vancouver Arts Awards from Geist Publisher Stephen Osborne.

Gillian Jerome is a poet, editor and sessional instructor in the English Department at the University of British Columbia. She is also a contributing editor at Geist magazine.

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Gary Geddes
Falsework

Goose Lane Editions , Fredericton, New Brunswick

A multi-voiced, inquisitive new kind of poetry that offers up portraits of the many lives affected by the crumbling of the Second Narrows Bridge in 1958, a seemingly indomitable structure.

The Book: On June 17, 1958, Vancouver’s Second Narrows Bridge collapsed while under construction. Eighteen men plunged to their deaths, and many other were injured. Falsework provides an elegiac portrait of the many lives affected by the crumpling of that seemingly indomitable structure.

In this extraordinary book, Gary Geddes takes the distant tragedy of the bridge collapse and captures the grit and spirit of the workers who died that day as much as the hollow pain of survivors and their families. The voices that speak from these pages are fictive, but by weaving his polyphonic narrative with grainy archival photos Geddes evokes the intimacy of his characters’ lives and the awful truth of experiences both raw and profane.

Jury Comments: Our jury was struck by the diversity of voice and perspective in this book and its complex portrait of grief and loss in this local tragedy—all supplemented by great archival photos. The bridge itself becomes one of the characters, heightening the impact of its collapse.

Gary Geddes is an acclaimed and award-winning writer, poet, editor and critic, who has travelled extensively, published over 35 books and lectured widely on Canadian literature. His honours include over a dozen national and international awards, among them the Commonwealth Poetry Regional Prize and the Gabriela Mistral Prize. Recently, he was Distinguished Professor of Canadian Culture at Western Washington University. In addition, Gary was the 2006 Writer-in-Residence at the Vancouver Public Library and is currently a writer-in-residence at the Okanagan College/Mackie Lake. His most recent book is the internationally acclaimed Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things.

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Eve Lazarus
At Home With History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes

Anvil Press , Vancouver

A social history and genealogy that reveals much about the history of the times and offers up a sense of place in the ongoing narrative of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver.

The Book: At Home With History is a collection of real life stories that bring to life the glamorous and not-so-glamorous social histories of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver—stories of brothels and bootleggers, secret rooms and Shakespearean-style murders. An Italian family survives the depression by selling booze and sandwiches from their eastside home. A Shaughnessy mansion headquarters the Ku Klux Klan and then a children’s hospice. A prominent Vancouver real estate and timber baron, accused of subterfuge, is driven from the country.

Every home has a social history and a genealogy that tells a tremendous amount about the history of the times and offers up a sense of place. Current homeowners are only temporary custodians, part of the chain in the ongoing narrative of the house. People change, styles change, colours change, cars change, but through it all, the house remains a central fixture and the structure for the stories in At Home With History.

Jury Comments: Our jury was delighted by the opportunity to peek behind the closed doors of private homes. The wonderful family photos and the personal quotes add to the textural richness of the book.

Eve Lazarus has worked as a freelance journalist and writer for more than 15 years. Originally from Australia, she is a former newspaper reporter and has written for a variety of periodicals in Canada and the United States, including the Globe & Mail, Style at Home, B.C. Business and Canadian Family magazines. She became obsessed with home histories about four years ago. Articles she has written on the subject have appeared in Style at Home, REM, the Globe & Mail and Nuvo magazine.

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Kaija Pepper
The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham

Dance Collection Press , Toronto

A meticulously researched insight into Peter Bingham’s contact improvisation and choreography with photographs, taking the reader inside the mind of a quiet, respectful but determined artist who has kept dancing through three turbulent decades of challenge and change.

The Book: Vancouver-based Artistic Director Peter Bingham has been a driving force in Canada’s contact improvisation scene for 30 years. Influenced by his early training with dancer/choreographer Linda Rubin, he later studied with American proponents of contact, Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith. In 1977, he co-founded Fulcrum with Andrew Harwood and Helen Clarke and the group presented contact-based dance performances and workshops in Vancouver and across Canada to enthusiastic response. In 1982, Bingham joined six other independent artists to create the collective EDAM, and has been its sole Artistic Director since 1989.

Jury Comments: Our jury found this book to be meticulously researched and written with detailed and thoughtful representation of the blossoming of the arts community in Vancouver over time. They found it to be a very readable and highly entertaining book about Vancouver’s contribution to the dance scene as well as the wider arts and cultural milieu in the city.

Kaija Pepper is an internationally-known Canadian dance writer, editor and lecturer and has authored The Dance Teacher: A Biography of Kay Armstrong and Theatrical Dance in Vancouver: 1890s-1920s. Pepper is a dance critic for The Globe & Mail and her quarterly “View from Vancouver” has run in Dance International for over a decade. Kaija has played a prominent role in establishing a literary community in the field of dance.

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