Book Award winners and short lists

View the shortlisted winner, finalists, and jury from current and past City of Vancouver Book Awards.

2024 short list

Five books that cover a range of genres were selected as finalists for the 2024 Vancouver Book Award.
2024 winner

Henry Tsang

White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver
Arsenal Pulp Press

Essays and photographs that document the anti-Asian riots of 1907 in the context of contemporary anti-Asian sentiment.

C.A. Tanaka

Baby Drag Queen
Orca Book Publishers

Transgender teen Ichiro enters a drag contest in hopes of earning enough money to live off the grid.

Rueben George and Michael Simpson

It Stops Here: Standing Up for Our Lands, Our Waters, and Our People
Allen Lane Canada

A personal account of one man’s confrontation with colonization that illuminates the philosophy and values of a First Nation on the front lines of the fight against an extractive industry, colonial government and threats to the life-giving Salish Sea.

Jen Sookfong Lee

Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart
McClelland & Stewart

An intimate memoir-in-pieces that uses one woman's life-long love affair with pop culture as a revelatory lens to explore family, identity, belonging, grief and the power of female rage.

Joni Low and Jeff O'Brien, editors, plus numerous authors

What Are Our Supports?
Doryphore / Richmond Art Gallery / Art Metropole / Information Office

An anthology of over 20 local and international contributors that draws attention to what we can do amidst the current conditions of environmental, social and political precarity.

Learn about our 2024 Book Award Finalists

Jury
- Oluwatoke Adejoye was born and raised in Akure, Nigeria. After being called to the Nigerian Bar, she worked in film as a Creative Executive. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia School of Creative Writing and the Managing Director at Geist Magazine. Her writing has recently appeared in Harvard University's Transition Magazine and The New Quarterly.
- Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press), chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press) and, forthcoming, Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books). His award-winning work appears widely in print and online. Say here, say beyond: word to Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and to the T’uubaa-asatx Nation, on whose unceded lands siya tries to practice kapwa-care at the threshold of grief and joy.
- Dina Del Bucchia is the author of five collections of poetry, Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013), Blind Items (Insomniac Press, 2014), Rom Com (Talonbooks, 2015), written with Daniel Zomparelli, It’s a Big Deal! (Talonbooks, 2019) and You’re Gonna Love This (Talonbooks, 2024). She also hosts Can’t Lit, a podcast on Canadian literature and culture, with Jen Sookfong Lee. Her first collection of short stories, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, was published in fall 2017 with Arsenal Pulp Press. She is the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers' Series and is on the editorial board of the independent press fine press.
2023 short list

From a vibrant collection of poetry to a complex tale about mother-daughter relationships, the 2023 finalists represent a range of human experience and all contribute to a greater understanding of Vancouver’s diversity and history.
2023 winner

Chelene Knight

Junie
Book*hug Press

Chelene Knight is the author of 3 books. She is currently working on a commissioned book on Black self-love and joy. Let it Go is forthcoming with HarperCollins Canada in 2024. Chelene is the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio.

Michele Assarasakorn and Nathan Fairbairn

PAWS: Mindy Makes Some Space
Razorbill

Michele Assarasakorn (also known as MSASSYK) is a colourist who has worked on comic series such as Eisner-nominated Isola, Gotham Academy, and the Magnificent Ms. Marvel.

Originally from Bangkok, Thailand, Michele now calls Vancouver home but also likes to travel the world working remotely as an artist. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram and enjoy more of her work on her online gallery .

Nathan Fairbairn is a New York Times bestselling and Eisner-nominated creator who has worked as a colourist for such iconic characters as Spider-Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Scott Pilgrim. He’s also co-creator, writer, and colourist of the graphic novel Lake of Fire. He started writing PAWS, his middle-grade debut, as a way to share his passion for comics and storytelling with his daughter.

Nathan lives with his family in Vancouver. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram and review more of his work on his online gallery .

Evelyn Lau

Cactus Gardens
Anvil Press

Evelyn Lau is a lifelong Vancouverite who has authored 14 books, including 9 volumes of poetry. Evelyn’s poetry has won multiple awards, and has been nominated for the Governor-General’s Award. From 2011 to 2014, Evelyn served as Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver.

Tara McGuire

Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose
Arsenal Pulp Press

Tara McGuire is a former broadcaster whose first book Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose (Arsenal Pulp Press) was recognized by The Walrus as one of the best Canadian books of 2022. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing and is a graduate of The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University. Tara lives in North Vancouver.

Danny Ramadan

The Foghorn Echoes
Penguin Random House

Danny Ramadan (he/him) is a Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker, and advocate for LGBTQ+ refugees.

His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, longlisted for Canada Reads, and named the Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star.

He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and currently lives in Vancouver with his husband.

Jan Wade, Deanna Bowen, Wayde Compton, Daina Augaitis, and Siobhan McCracken Nixon

Soul Power
Information Office, Vancouver Art Gallery

Jan Wade was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to a Black Canadian father with familial origins in the American South and a Canadian mother of European descent. After studying at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Wade moved to Vancouver in 1983 and became part of the underground art and music scene in the city. During this period Wade began her research into African diasporic spiritual practices and decided she wanted her art to reflect where she came from and who she is, commencing her unique artistic journey marked by self-sufficiency, empowerment, hope, and radical joy.

Deanna Bowen is a descendant of two Black Prairie pioneer families from Amber Valley and Campsie, Alberta. Recently, her work has involved close examination of her family’s migration and their connections to Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley and Black Strathcona, the “All-Black” towns of Oklahoma, the Kansas Exoduster migrations, and the Ku Klux Klan in Canada and the US. She is a recipient of numerous accolades including a 2020 Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts and the 2021 Scotiabank Photography Award.

Wayde Compton is the author of 49th Parallel Psalm, Performance Bond, After Canaan: Essays on Race Writing and Region, and The Outer Harbour: Stories. He also edited the anthology Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. He is a co-founder of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, and is the former director of the creative writing program at SFU Continuing Studies. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College.

Daina Augaitis was Chief Curator/Associate Director at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1996 to 2017 and was formerly Director of Visual Arts at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has held curatorial positions at Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; Western Front, Vancouver; Convertible Showroom, Vancouver; and Franklin Furnace, New York.

Siobhan McCracken Nixon is currently Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Recent exhibition projects include Where do we go from here?; Transits and Returns; Mowry Baden; and Dana Claxton: Fringing the Cube. Previously she worked as Assistant Curator at the Hayward Gallery (London, UK) and worked in Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Britain (London, UK).

Jury
- Allan Cho is an academic librarian and researcher who specializes in publishing, libraries, and diversity. He is the executive editor of Ricepaper magazine and festival director of LiterASIAN Festival. He edited the anthologies AlliterAsian: Twenty Years of Ricepaper Magazine and Belief: An Anthology of Asian Canadian Writing. Allan lives in Vancouver.
- Molly Cross-Blanchard is a white and Métis writer, editor, and educator born on Treaty 3 (Fort Frances, ON), raised on Treaty 6 (Prince Albert, SK), and currently living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She is the former poetry editor of PRISM international, the former publisher of Room, and currently teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. In service to the writing community, Molly serves as the Indigenous Advocate for the National Council of TWUC, sits on the Board of Directors at Asparagus Magazine, and consults on the Equity Advisory Committee at the BC Arts Council. Her debut collection of poetry is Exhibitionist (Coach House 2021).
- Dina del Bucchia is the author of a short story collection, and 4 collections of poetry. She is co-host of the podcast, Can’t Lit, and is the artistic director of the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series. She is on the editorial board of the small press fine press. Her fifth poetry collection, You’re Gonna Love This, will be out with Talonbooks in spring 2024.
2022 short list

The 2022 finalists, all published in 2021, cover a range of genres and explore many of the city’s social and cultural issues such as displacement, homelessness, migration, and colonization. These titles also focus on connection and what it means to belong to land, community, self, and place.
2022 winner

Karen Duffek, Bill McLennan, and Jordan Wilson

Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art
Figure 1 Publishing

Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art is a landmark volume that brings together over eighty contemporary Indigenous knowledge holders with extraordinary works of historical Northwest Coast art. First Nations Elders, artists, scholars, and other community members visited the Museum of Anthropology to connect with these objects, learn from the hands of their ancestors, and share their thoughts and insights.

Finalists

Meghan Bell

Erase and Rewind
Book*hug Press

The stories in Erase and Rewind probe the complexities of living as a woman in a skewed society. Told from the perspective of various female protagonists, they pick at rape culture, sexism in the workplace, uneven romantic and platonic relationships, and the impact of trauma under late-stage capitalism. Bell’s debut collection is a highwire balance of levity and gravity, finding the extraordinary in common experiences.

Henry Doyle

No Shelter
Anvil Press

These down-to-earth poems take readers on a hard-scrabble journey, starting from Doyle’s early years as a runaway from foster homes, an incarcerated youth, a boxer, and a homeless wage-earner living in shelters and on the streets of Ottawa and Toronto, to his eventual arrival in Vancouver to work in the construction labour pools before landing work as a custodian and maintenance man.

Grace Eiko Thomson

Chiru Sakura—Falling Cherry Blossoms
Caitlin Press

A vital memoir by two Japanese Canadian women reflecting on their family history, cultural heritage, generational trauma, and the meaning of home. At eight years old, Grace Eiko Nishikihama was forcibly removed from her Vancouver home and interned with her parents and siblings in the BC Interior. This is a moving and politically outspoken memoir written by Grace, now a grandmother, with passages from a journal kept by her late mother, Sawae Nishikihama.

Paul Wong, Debbie Cheung, and Christopher Lee

Occupying Chinatown
On Main

Occupying Chinatown focuses on several of Wong’s major artworks exploring Chinese Canadian identity and his engagement with Vancouver’s Chinese communities. With full-colour photos and documentation of Wong’s artwork as well as three original essays, Occupying Chinatown is an evocative exploration of language, amnesia, and cultural displacement, inspired by 900 letters sent to Suk-Fong Wong, Paul Wong’s mother, over the course of 65 years.

Jury
- Allan Cho is an academic librarian and researcher who specializes in publishing, libraries, and diversity. He is the Executive Editor of Ricepaper Magazine and Festival Director of LiterASIAN Festival. He edited the anthologies AlliterAsian: Twenty Years of Ricepaper Magazine and Belief: An Anthology of Asian Canadian Writing. Allan lives in Vancouver.
- Kim Koch is a bookseller with over twenty years experience in the trade. She is the co-owner of The Paper Hound Bookshop, a new, used and rare bookshop in downtown Vancouver.
- Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being, which was a finalist for the 2019 Vancouver Book Award. Her writing has recently appeared in the Literary Review of Canada and is forthcoming in The Malahat Review and C Magazine. She is at work on a novel.
2020 and 2021 short list

Six books that cover a range of genres were selected as finalists for the annual City of Vancouver Book Awards.

2021 winner

Michelle Good

Five Little Indians
Harper Collins

Five Little Indians tells the story of how the paths of five friends cross and crisscross over decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission - a remote, church-run residential school. The teens find their way to the foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. Good chronicles, with compassion and insight, the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past, and ultimately find a way forward

2020 winner

Catherine B. Clement

Chinatown Through a Wide Lens: The Hidden Photographs of Yucho Chow
Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC

Clement’s book showcases the long-hidden work of Vancouver’s first and most prolific Chinese photographer. For almost 80 years, Yucho Chow’s affordable and friendly studio in Chinatown opened its doors to everyone. He captured the faces of many early marginalized communities denied service by white photographers. Collected over 10 years from private, family collections, these aging images are visual evidence of the diverse communities that once turned to Vancouver’s Chinatown for acceptance and services during a time of enormous racism.

2021 short list

Joseph Dandurand

The East Side of it All
Nightwood Editions

The East Side of it All follows the experiences of life as a drug user and single-room occupant in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and of the ongoing process of healing through reconnection with family, the natural world, and traditional Indigenous (Kwantlen) storytelling.

Danny Ramadan & Anna Bron

Salma the Syrian Chef
Annick Press

Ramadan creates a beautiful representation of Syrian culture told through the meal Salma prepares and Anna Bron’s vibrant illustrations, while the diverse cast of characters speaks to the power of cultivating community in challenging circumstances.

Honourable mention

Marlene Yuen

Ho Sun Hing Printers
Self-published

An honourable mention goes to Yuen’s short print-run artist book, co-publised with the grunt gallery. Yuen tells the story, through text, letterpress, and risograph printing, of Canada’s first Chinese-English letterpress printing shop located in the historic Chinatown of Vancouver.

2020 short list

Francine Cunningham

on/me
Caitlin Press

Explores, with keen attention and poise, what it means to be forced to exist within the margins. Cunningham holds a lens to residential schools, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous Peoples forcibly sent to sanatoriums, systemic racism and mental illness, and translates these topics into lived experiences that are nuanced, emotional, funny, and heartbreaking all at once.

Alex Leslie

Vancouver for Beginners
Book*hug Press

Nostalgia of place is dissected through the mapping of a city where Leslie leads readers past surrealist development proposals, post-apocalyptic postcards, childhood landmarks long gone, and a developer who paces at the city’s edge, shoring it up with aquariums.

Jury

The seven titles were chosen by an independent selection panel that included:

Hilary Atleo is the co-owner of Iron Dog Books, metro Vancouver's only bookshop on wheels, and now an immobile storefront located in Hastings-Sunrise. Hilary is Anishinaabe from Curve Lake, Ontario, but now spends more time in her husband Cliff Atleo's Nuu Chah Nulth territories on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Hilary believes books should be available and accessible, and that bookshops are fundamentally place-making.

Chris Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures and Director of the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program (ACAM) at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of /The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature/ (2012) and was awarded the Killam Research Prize in 2015. His current research focuses on the Chinese Canadian historical fiction and Asian Canadian visual cultures.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the award-winning author of Port of Being. She was a finalist for the 2021 Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry and the 2021 National Magazine Awards. She is at work on a novel.
2019 short list

The 2019 short list recognizes books that demonstrate excellence and reflect Vancouver’s unique character, rich diversity and culture, history, and residents. These books make visible our invisible social and cultural features: segregation, displacement, gendered violence, homelessness, migration, and other colonizing and disruptive forces.
Winner

Robert Watt and Susan Point

People Among the People: The public art of Susan Point
Figure 1 Publishing with The Museum of Anthropology

Robert Watt

MA, AIH, LVO studied at UBC and Carleton University before working in the Public Archives of Canada, Capilano College, and as the City Archivist for the City of Vancouver.

In 1973 he joined the Centennial Museum (now known as the Museum of Vancouver) as the Curator of History. While at the museum Mr. Watt developed a deep and enduring interest in the art and cultures of the Indigenous Peoples of the West Coast.

In 1977 he worked with Bill Reid on the creation of the Jubilee Goldsmith’s Workshop for young Indigenous artists. This interest led to Mr. Watt’s introduction to the earliest stages of Susan Point’s art. He was appointed Director of the Museum in 1980.

In 1988, Mr. Watt was appointed the first Chief Herald of Canada. He oversaw the creation of a contemporary and Canadian system of heraldic identification before his retirement in 2007, when then–Governor General Michaëlle Jean appointed him Rideau Herald Emeritus.

From 2009 to 2012, he served as Citizenship Judge in the Vancouver office of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

Mr. Watt has received many honours and awards including the 125th Canadian Confederation Medal and the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee medals.

In 2008, he was invested into the Royal Victorian Order by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. Currently, Mr. Watt serves as President of l’Académie international d’héraldique and Honorary Colonel of the 12th Vancouver Field Ambulance.

He lives in North Vancouver with his wife, Alison Jean Watt.

Susan Point

OC, DFA, DLITT, RCA, is a descendant of the Musqueam, Coast Salish Peoples. She is the daughter of Edna Grant and Anthony Point. Susan inherited the beliefs of her culture and the ancestral traditions of her people from her mother, Edna, who learned from her mother, Mary Charlie-Grant.

Susan’s distinctive style has led the resurgence of Coast Salish art. She draws creativity from the stories of her ancestors and continually innovates with non-traditional materials and techniques, thereby inspiring a new generation of artists. Susan is most proud to be an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has been presented with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her contributions to Canada.

She has been recognized with an Indspire Achievement Award, a YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, a BC Creative Achievement Award and Lifetime Achievement Award, and a lifetime appointment to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and was named to the Vancouver Sun’s 2010 “BC’s Top 100 Influential Women” list and the City of Vancouver’s 2012 “Remarkable Women” list.

Susan has honorary doctorates from the University of Victoria, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, and Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

In 2016, Susan became a member of the City of Vancouver’s Civic Merit Award, and in 2018 she was awarded the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, and named Ambassador of the Arts by the Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts.

Connect online
Finalists

Eve Lazarus

Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer
Arsenal Pulp Press

Eve Lazarus is a Vancouver writer with a passion for true crime stories, cold cases, and non-traditional history. She is the author of five books:
- Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer, a finalist for the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award (BC Book Prizes) and an Arthur Ellis Award (Crime Writers of Canada)
- Cold Case Vancouver: The City's Most Baffling Unsolved Murders, a finalist for the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes)
- Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver's First Forensic Investigator, a finalist for an Arthur Ellis Award (Crime Writers of Canada)
- Sensational Vancouver
- Sensational Victoria
- At Home with History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver's Heritage Houses, a 2008 City of Vancouver book award finalist
Philip Huynh

The Forbidden Purple City
Goose Lane Editions

Philip Huynh was born in Vancouver to parents who had fled Vietnam during the civil war. His stories have been published in the Malahat Review, the New Quarterly, Event, and the Journey Prize Anthology, and cited in The Best American Stories.

He is the winner of the Open Season Award from the Malahat Review, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.

A practicing lawyer, he lives in Richmond, BC.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Port of Being
Invisible publishing

Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Quill & Quire, Best Canadian Poetry 2019 and Canadian Literature.

CBC recently named her as a "writer to watch" and listed Port of Being as one of the best Canadian poetry books of 2018.

Shazia lives on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, where she works as an English and creative writing instructor and as an editor for various presses across Canada.

She will appear at the Singapore Writers Festival in November 2019. Shazia is a columnist for Open Book and is currently at work on a novel.

Susin Nielsen

No Fixed Address
Tundra Books

Susin Nielsen got her start writing for the hit TV series Degrassi Junior High, and went on to write for over twenty Canadian shows.

She is the author of six critically-acclaimed and award-winning titles, including Optimists Die First, We Are All Made of Molecules, Word Nerd, and The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award).

Nielsen has been called “The John Green of Canada” (and she once had a dream that he had been called “The Susin Nielsen of the United States”). Her books have been translated into many languages.

She lives in Vancouver, BC, with her family and two naughty cats.

Connect online
Tundra social media
Jury
- Hilary Atleo is an itinerant Indigenous bookseller and operator of Iron Dog Books - a mobile bookshop dedicated to bringing low-cost reading to Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh territories.
- Nav Nagra is the Communications Manager at Vantage Point and serves on the board of the Vancouver Art Book Fair. She is an editor and member of Room Magazine’s collective. She is working on what will, one day, be a novel.
- Billeh Nickerson is an author, editor, and educator whose collection, Artificial Cherry, was nominated for the 2014 City of Vancouver Book Award. He’s Interim Chair of Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
2018 short list

Favouring connection over isolation and healing over harm, the finalist authors explore the impermanence of memory, people, places, and spaces in Vancouver’s second century.
Winner

Chelene Knight

Dear Current Occupant
Book*hug

Chelene Knight’s honest and powerful memoire of a childhood in East Vancouver genre-busts its way to deeper understanding of memory and of belonging. Growing up precariously-housed in 20 different homes, the author pens letters to their current occupants and so deconstructs her past and re-defines what it means to be home.
- Learn more about Chelene Knight
- Borrow this book from the library
Finalists

In the vibrant community space at the Central Library’s top floor, the short-listed titles were celebrated in our 30th annual Vancouver Book Award on Dec 8. Authors and collaborators came together through an intimate conversation and read from their works.

Travis Lupick

Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction
Arsenal Pulp Press

Travis Lupick has written a tour de force of long form journalism. This award-winning local story chronicles, not just the struggle of courageous and committed people, but the passion and vigor that placed Vancouver at the vanguard of harm reduction against a deadly drug epidemic whose toll most heavily impacts the city’s most marginalized citizens.
- Learn more about Travis Lupick
- Borrow this book from the library
Erín Moure

Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots
New Star Books

Over seven days, Erín Moure wrote the life history of Paul Émile Savard who left his SRO on the Downtown Eastside and died the next day, alone, at St. Paul’s hospital. Refusing to let his life be ungrievable and ungrieved, she created a meditation on the impermanence of life and memory—especially in our fast-changing city.
- Learn more about Erín Moure
- Borrow this book from the library
Rachel Rose, Ed

Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food
Anvil Press

Rachel Rose’s legacy project as Vancouver’s fourth Poet Laureate gives voice to people of diverse cultures, belief systems, and economic backgrounds in Vancouver’s literary and culinary communities. Bold new voices are paired with award-winning writers. They serve us poems, memories, recipes, sumptuous photos and interviews that satiate and satisfy.
- Learn more about Rachel Rose
- Borrow this book from the library
Jury
- Nav Nagra is a writer and reader. She serves on the board of the Vancouver Art/Book Fair and works closely with the non-profit sector in her position at Vantage Point.
- Dory Nason (Anishinaabe) is a Senior Instructor, Institute of Critical Indigenous Studies & the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia.
- Billeh Nickerson is an author, editor and educator whose collection, Artificial Cherry, was nominated for the 2014 City of Vancouver Book Award. He’s permanent faculty at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
2017 short list

The role of connection and healing take center stage in the four finalists for the Book Award. They explore the great mysteries of what it means to belong to land, community, self, and place.
Winner

Carleigh Baker for Bad Endings

Stumbling through the fogs of loneliness, Carleigh Baker's finely drawn characters find respite in the particular intimacy afforded by ephemeral relationships. A renewal of connection with the more-than-human world offers the characters sustenance amidst the demands of an ever-accelerating city.

Finalists

This year, the City of Vancouver honours local authors at the Mayor's Arts Awards on October 11. In its 29th year, the book award recognizes books of any genre that demonstrate excellence in content, illustration, design, and reflect Vancouver’s unique character, rich diversity, culture, and history.

The role of connection and healing take center stage in this year's four finalists for the Book Award. They explore the great mysteries of what it means to belong to land, community, self, and place.

Sam Wiebe
Invisible Dead

The first novel in a series of mysteries focused on character Dave Wakeland. This fast-paced thriller set in Vancouver's criminal underworld follows a private investigator on a journey to solve an unsolvable mystery.

Gabrielle Prendergast
Pandas on the Eastside

A middle-grade novel about a young girl who rallies her friends and neighbors on the poverty-stricken Eastside to save two pandas from being sent back to China.

Grant Arnold, Ian M. Thom, Susan Point, Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Thomas Cannell, Myrtle Mckay, and William (Bill) McLennan
Susan Point: Spindle Whorl

A visually pleasing discovery of the works of Coast Salish artist Susan Point who uses the spindle whorl to create traditional art.

Jury
- Shirley Lew, Dean, Library, Teaching and Learning Services at Vancouver Community College and Secretary of The Vancouver Writers Festival Board of Directors
- Baharak Yousefi, Librarian and Head of Library Communications at Simon Fraser University, Vice-Chair and Chair Elect on the Board of the BC Libraries Cooperative
- Dory Nason (Anishinaabe), Senior Instructor, Institute of Critical Indigenous Studies & Department of English, Status of Woman Chair UBC Faculty Association, Faculty Affiliate for the Centre of Teaching, Learning and Technology
2016 short list

The 2016 short list is an eclectic collection that includes a non-fiction memoir, a book of poetry, and an art exhibition catalogue. Each book reveals the complicated vision of a city coming to terms with its past and a desire to better itself.
Winners

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Karen Duffek & Tania Willard

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories
Figure 1 Publishing and Museum of Anthropology at UBC

This provocative book explores the emphatically political and visually stunning artwork by celebrated contemporary artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. It is a beautiful and well-written publication, providing a timely challenge to the notion of what Vancouver is as the city moves towards reconciliation with First Nations communities.

Finalists

Wayde Compton and Renée Sarojini Saklikar

The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them
Anvil Press and SFU Public Square

This exquisite and accessible collection of poetry invites an intimate exploration of our complex city. Expertly edited, this gem of an anthology contains a myriad of perspectives, styles, and voices, revealing Vancouver in all of its diversity.

Lorimer Shenher

That Lonely Section of Hell
Greystone Books

In this memoir, ex-police detective Lorimer Shenher (previously known as Lori Shenher) recounts his experience working on Vancouver’s Missing and Murdered Women Investigation. Detailing the prejudices that shrouded the case, it is an honest look at our institutionalized failures and a call to value all lives in our city.

Jury
- Shirley Lew, Dean, Library, Teaching and Learning Services at Vancouver Community College and Secretary of The Vancouver Writers Festival Board of Directors
- Zoey Leigh Peterson, author and librarian
- Mary Schendlinger, writer, editor, publishing teacher and co-founder of Geist magazine.
2015 short list

The 2015 short list covers a range of genres: non-fiction, short stories, poetry, and a children's book. The short-listed books create a street-level walk through our city to amplify our pride and understanding of the flawed and beautiful, young but wise city we inhabit.
Winner

Wayde Compton

The Outer Harbour
Arsenal Pulp Press

This collection of short stories is a creative manifesto for a radical change in Vancouver’s attitude to its marginalized citizens and land use to avert a crash-course with a dystopic, very-near future. Borrow this book from the library.

Finalists

Bren Simmers

Hastings-Sunrise
Nightwood Editions

This book-length poem is a whimsical, yet political collection which balances vibrancy and eccentricity against the anxiety and despair of living amidst an affordability crisis in East Vancouver. Borrow this book from the library.

Aaron Chapman

Live at the Commodore
Arsenal Pulp Press

This work of non-fiction is an homage to the “Fabulous Commodore Ballroom,” a music venue which for 85 years has served as a cultural barometer for Vancouver. Borrow this book from the library.

Lois Simmie and Cynthia Nugent

Mister Got To Go, Where are you?
Red Deer Press

This children’s book is the third in a lovingly written and illustrated Vancouver-based series featuring an impromptu journey by the iconic cat from the Sylvia Hotel. Author: Lois Simmie. Illustrator: Cynthia Nugent Borrow this book from the library.

Jury
- Anna Ling Kaye (editor of Ricepaper Magazine and 2015 Journey Prize Anthology author)
- Zoey Leigh Peterson (novelist and librarian)
- Sirish Rao (Artistic Director and Co-Founder of the Indian Summer Festival).
2014 short list

The books on the 2014 short list cover a range of genres: fiction, non-fiction, short stories, poetry, and biography, with each book offering original perspectives on Vancouver’s diversity.
Winner

David Stouck

Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life
Douglas & McIntyre

This narrative spotlights an iconic local figure, providing a peccadillos-and-all portrait of the man, his milieu and accomplishments.

Finalists

Bruce Grierson

What Makes Olga Run?
Random House

This work of non-fiction focuses on the extraordinary achievements of an athlete who began a championship track career at the age of 77.

Doretta Lau

How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?
Nightwood Editions

This witty and imaginative volume of short stories features the children and grandchildren of immigrants, adoptees, and multiracial adults with perspectives on what it means to be Canadian.

Ashley Little

Anatomy of a Girl Gang
Arsenal Pulp Press

This intense, surprising novel tells the stories of strong girls who, while deeply troubled, are agents of their own destinies.

Billeh Nickerson

Artificial Cherry
Arsenal Pulp Press

This poet presents a collection of pieces which play with pop culture references and deconstruct the everyday into resonant moments.

Jury
- Jordan Abel, poet and editor for Poetry Is Dead magazine and the former editor for PRISM international and Geist
- Elee Kraljii Gardiner, award-winning poet and director of the Thursdays Writing Collective
- Anna Ling Kaye, journalist and Editor of ricepaper magazine
2013 short list

A memoir, two books of poetry, and two non-fiction works, all of which reflect Vancouver's rich history and culture, were selected as finalists for the 2013 City of Vancouver Book Award. The 2013 short list comes from a diverse list of publishers and each book illuminates various aspects of the city and its boundaries.
Winner

Amber Dawn
How Poetry Saved My Life – A Hustler's Memoir

A memoir of her time as a sex trade worker, this honest and brave book incorporates her personal and poignant revelations, narrative, and poetry to hold a fractured mirror up to our city.

Finalists

Jancis M. Andrews
The Ballad of Mrs. Smith

This collection of poems gives a startlingly fresh take on an ageless story of a fall from grace and redemption.

Brad Cran
Ink on Paper

This collection of poetry from the City's former Poet Laureate. The sometimes funny and other times deeply-affecting poems highlight powerful verse and stories that make us more aware of often marginalized people.

Harold Kalman and Robin Ward
Exploring Vancouver - The Architectural Guide

This beautiful and highly useful book of photographs and text provides an extensive tour of the city's past and present buildings and demonstrates how the city's natural setting inspired a quintessential West Coast style.

Sean Kheraj
Inventing Stanley Park – An Environmental History

An environmental history that provides a fascinating, nuanced and often surprising look at Vancouver's iconic park with beautiful illustrations and textual details.

Jury
- Elee Kraljii Gardiner, an award-winning poet and director of the Thursdays Writing Collective
- Paul Whitney, a retired City librarian
- Andrea Davies, owner of Hager Books in Kerrisdale
2012 short list

The 2012 short list is dominated by books from independent presses, with writing from, about, around, and through Vancouver's literary, cultural, and geographic margins. The list celebrates the creative impulse of emerging and established writers and historic and contemporary icons who helped shape Vancouver's diverse cultural and creative communities. It embraces the examination of dark confrontations and entrenched racism in our collective history.
Winner

WH New
YVR
(Oolichan Books)

The city reverberates with life as Bill New explores Vancouver in verse. His powerful poems capture history, geography, politics, and more. In his hands, even the place names of city parks thrive with rhythm.

Finalists

John Mikhail Asfour and Elee Kraljii Gardiner, editors
V6A: Writing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside
(Arsenal Pulp Press)

This remarkable anthology, which grew out of the Thursdays Writing Collective at Carnegie Community Centre, shows the intellectually and culturally rich heart of the Downtown Eastside. Work by writers both known and new makes for a potent mix.

Claudia Cornwall
At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver
(Mother Tongue Publishing)

This biography of Curt Lang reveals, with precision and suspense, how he packed his too-short life with pursuits ranging from poetry and painting to log salvage, boat building, and software development. His story parallels Vancouver's own mid-twentieth-century evolution.

Ali Kazimi
Undesirables: White Canada & the Komagata Maru
(Douglas & McIntyre)

In this splendidly illustrated and designed book, Ali Kazimi enlarges our understanding of the months-long Komagata Maru standoff, where racist immigration policies were challenged and transformed when more than 350 South Asian people were turned away from Vancouver's shores.

Jen Sookfong Lee
The Better Mother
(Random House Canada)

This atmospheric novel follows Danny Lim, a gay photographer from Chinatown, and Valerie Nealy, an older burlesque artist who grew up in abject poverty on River Road. Vancouver, in its many moods and guises, is witness to the blossoming of their unlikely friendship.

Jury
- Jane Bouey, former People's Co-Op bookseller
- David Chariandy, author and educator
- Rebecca Wigod, retired Vancouver Sun Books Editor
2011 short list

The 2011 short list reveals Vancouver’s history of diversity. While one book reveals the struggles of the Italian immigrant experience, another provides insight into diverse characters from the Downtown Eastside. The third book examines black history and culture in Vancouver, and the fourth portrays Vancouver’s history through a range of children’s perspectives.
Winner

Michael Christie
The Beggar's Garden

Set in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, The Beggar's Garden is Christie's debut collection of nine linked stories, each full of wit and sensitivity for its misfit characters.

Michael Christie received his MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Originally a professional skate boarder, he has also worked in a homeless shelter in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and provided outreach to the severely mentally ill. Christie lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario, with his wife and son.

Finalists

Lynne Bowen
Whoever Gives Us Bread

Whoever Gives Us Bread is a comprehensive non-fiction title that recounts the history of Italian immigrant settlement in a burgeoning British Columbia and the Italian-Canadian contribution to Vancouver.

Lynne Bowen was the Rogers Communications Co-Chair of Creative Non-fiction Writing at the University of British Columbia between 1992 and 2006. She has written five other books on Western Canadian history, including, Robert Dunsmuir; Those Lake People: Stories of Cowichan Lake; Muddling Through: The Remarkable Story of the Barr Colonialists; Three Dollar Dreams; and Boss Whistle. For her non-fiction writing, Bowen has won the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for Writing British Columbia History and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.

Wayde Compton
After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region

An insightful collection of essays, After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region examines the politics of race in Western Canada and Vancouver's black history, politics, and contemporary culture.

Wayde Compton was the 2011 Writer-in-Residence at the Vancouver Public Library. A diverse artist, Compton is the author of two poetry collections, 49th Parallel Psalm (shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize) and Performance Bond, and is the editor of Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. Compton also performs turntable-based sound poetry, teaching English composition and literature at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and at Coquitlam College, and is a founding member of the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project. After Canaan is Compton's first non-fiction book.

Lesley McKnight
Vancouver Kids

Vancouver Kids is based on the real lives of Vancouver kids, and is a unique collection of 22 stories that tells the tale of Vancouver's diverse and eclectic history through the eyes of children.

Leslie McKnight is a freelance researcher and writer living in Vancouver with her husband and three children. Her articles have been published in the likes of The Globe & Mail and the Vancouver Courier.

Jury
- Emilie Dierking, bookseller
- Lee Henderson, author and 2009 Vancouver Book Award winner
- Jim Wong-Chu, poet and editor
2010 short list
Winners

Bruce Grenville and Scott Steedman
Visions of British Columbia
(Douglas & McIntyre)

Drawing primarily from the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, images by notable visual artists are matched with texts from acclaimed Vancouver and BC writers. They speak to the diverse visions of this place, its peoples, and its histories.

Bruce Grenville is senior curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He has organized many group exhibitions, including The Uncannj: Experiments in Cyborg Culture and KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art.

Scott Steedman is a freelance editor and the author of a dozen books. He has worked in publishing since 1987 in the UK, France, and Canada, and spent five years as the literary critic for The Paris Voice.

Finalists

George Bowering
The Box
(New Star Books)

A tour through the glory days of the 1960s in Vancouver led by Canada's first Poet Laureate. In a series of ten stories introduced by archival photographs, The Box breaks with the convential short story genre by weaving together biography, autobiography, parable, and drama.

George Bowering taught English at Simon Fraser University from 1972 until his retirement in 2001. Canada's first Poet Laureate, he is an Officer of both the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia. He was one of the founders of the poetry publication Tish, and has received two Governor-General's awards: the first, for poetry, in 1969, for The Gangs of Kosmos and Rocky Mountain Foot, and the second, in 1980, for Burning Water, reissued by New Star in 2007.

Bowering is well-known for his love of baseball, about which he has also written. He is the author of nine novels, five books of short stories, and numerous volumes of poetry, including Autobiology (New Star, 1972). A reissue of Caprice is due in October 2010.

Matt Hern
Common Ground in a Liquid City
(AK Press)

The importance of place in the urban future is explored in this series of essays and images that uses Vancouver as a foil in a global search for what makes cities liveable.

Matt Hern lives and works in East Vancouver, where he is director of the Purple Thistle Centre. He holds a PhD in urban studies, lectures globally, and teaches at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. His books include Field Day, Watch Yourself, and Everywhere All the Time.

Chris MacDonald
A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver
(Douglas & McIntyre)

This easy-to-use pocket guidebook Features Vancouver's most interesting and innovative buildings. Through full-colour photographs, architects' drawings, and critical essays, the book highlights a period of unprecedented growth in Vancouver, beginning with Expo 86 and continuing through the 2010 Winter Games.

Chris MacDonald is Director of the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and contributes regularly to popular and academic journals concerned with architecture and urbanism. He is the author of Cabin, Cottage and Camp. He lives in Vancouver.

Jury
- Janice Douglas, former librarian
- Fred Wah, poet
- Jean Wilson, former associate director, editorial, from UBC Press
2009 short list
Winner

Lee Henderson
The Man Game
(Penguin Canada)

A fascinating story featuring quirky characters, nude wrestling and insights into early Vancouver culture. Henderson’s portraits of first nations, lumberjacks, vaudeville performers, race relations and class conflict in frontier BC are presented with humour and authenticity. This book, according to the independent jury, was a ‘grabber’ from the start.

Lee Henderson is the author of the award-winning short story collection The Broken Record Technique (2002). His book The Man Game won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize at the 2009 BC Book Prizes. He is a contributing editor to the arts magazines Border Crossings in Canada and Contemporary in the UK. He has published fiction and art criticism in numerous periodicals and co-organizes Father Zosima Presents, a monthly night of sound performances where he lives in Vancouver, BC.

Finalists

Gabor Maté
In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts
(Vintage Canada)

A refreshing performance of social critique that mixes documentary, medical analysis, and personal life-writing to provoke reflection on addiction and the various sites it surfaces in, most particularly Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Maté manages to balance the subjective and the objective in a debate that fosters a fuller and more poignant consideration of this personal and public blemish. The “national” response to this book underlines a considerable consensus.

Gabor Maté, M.D. is the author of the bestselling books Scattered Minds and When the Body Says No – published in ten languages on five continents – and co-author, with Gordon Neufeld, of Hold On To Your Kids. Former medical columnist for the Globe and Mail, where his byline continues to be seen on issues of health and parenting, Dr. Maté has had a family practice, worked as a palliative care physician and, most recently, with the addicted men and women in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

Meredith Quartermain
Nightmarker
(NeWest Press)

Nightmarker demonstrates a wide range of Quartermain’s writerly pallet. The forms she plays with in this book, the anecdote and the prose-poem, provide a stage for the geographical imagination to roam through Vancouver’s historical and physical grounding accompanied by the ghost of Captain George Vancouver. The pleasure of the book lies in the playful and dramatic voices she uses to portray the architecture, activities, and geopolitical thinking that shape the city.

Meredith Quartermain's Vancouver Walking won the BC Book Awards 2006 Prize for Poetry. Two new books have come out since then: Matter from BookThug, and Nightmarker from NeWest. Early books include The Eye-Shift of Surface, Wanders [with Robin Blaser], and A Thousand Mornings, prose poems about old Vancouver's dockside area. Her work has appeared in magazines across Canada including The Walrus, Canadian Literature, the Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line, filling Station, Prism International, and other magazines. While in the cash-paid labour force, she taught English Literature and Composition at UBC and Capilano College. She has since enjoyed leading workshops at the Naropa Summer Writing Program and the Kootenay School of Writing. In 2002, she and husband Peter Quartermain founded Nomados Literary Publishers, through which they've published more than 30 books.

Jury
- Janice Douglas, librarian
- Fred Wah, poet
- Fernanda Viveiros, Executive Director of the Federation of BC Writers