Charles Taylor Prize Announced Today

The winner for The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, one of Canada’s top non-fiction awards, will be announced today at a lunchtime ceremony in Toronto. The five finalists for the $25,000 prize include Wade Davis, Charlotte Gill, JJ Lee, Madeline Sonik, and Andrew Westoll. Each runner-up will receive $2,000.

The prize commemorates the life and work of the late Charles Taylor and 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. Previous winners include Wayne Johnston, Carol Sheilds and Charles Foran.

This year’s shortlisted titles explore a range of topics from the historical, to the environment and delve into more personal territory.

Wade Davis’ Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, is the study of George Mallory’s heroic attempt to scale Everest. The jury’s commendation noted, “With skill and insight, Davis explores the meaning of t

his valorous yet tragic climb for post-war Britain and the world.”

Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe is her account of the back-breaking work of tree-planting, which the jury described as “a carefully balanced story of science,business and friendship, and one that is surprisingly unsentimental. Gill shares her love for Canada’s boreal forests, the tragedy of their disappearances and the grueling work involved in replacing them.”

JJ Lee’s The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit is his intimate story of trying to remake one of his late father’s old suits. The jury called it, “Beautifully crafted… a heartbreaking page-turner about a family, an abusive father, and men’s fashion. Who could have thought these themes could work together? In his first book, Lee has shown us how.”

Madeline Sonik’s Afflictions & Departures: Essays is the memoir of her childhood in the 1960s and 70s. The jury says it, “Defies all our expectations of memoir. She captures crystalline moments of childhood memory… and her letter-perfect, child’s-eye view of the world brings back that time with such intensity that the reader can almost smell and taste it.”

Andrew Westoll’s The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery is the primatologist’s book on the rescued research chimps of Fauna Sanctuary. The jury says, “Westoll deftly draws the reader into the wild day-to-day ride of life with the Fauna chimps… heartrending and heart-warming, this is a stunning and important work of art and documentary and science.”

The jurors for this years prize are Allan M. Brandt, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, award-winning author Stevie Cameron – shortlisted herself for the prize last year –  and editor and consultant Susan Renouf, who has worked with such authors as Farley Mowat, Modris Eksteins, Marq DeVilliers, Maude Barlow, Helen Humphreys and Molly Peacock, among others.