TORONTO — Two award-winning memoirists are among the five finalists vying for the RBC Taylor Prize, with the winner set to receive $30,000.
A three-member jury revealed the short list for the non-fiction prize at an announcement in Toronto on Wednesday.
Darrel McLeod of Sooke, B.C., is being recognized for his debut “Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age” (Douglas & McIntyre), which won the Governor General’s Literary Award in the non-fiction category last fall, about growing up steeped in violence and the inherited trauma of his mother’s experience in residential school.
Ottawa-based author Elizabeth Hay, winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, is also in the running for “All Things Consoled: A Daughter’s Memoir” (McClelland & Stewart) about looking after her parents in their final days and untangling the family history they left behind.
Victoria-based Bill Gaston made the cut for “Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood” (Hamish Hamilton) about his relationship with his alcoholic father and the love of fishing that brought them closer.
Adventurer Kate Harris, who lives off the grid near the border of B.C., Yukon and Alaska, received a nod for “Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Roads” (Knopf Canada) about her bicycle travels retracing the fabled network of trade routes connecting Asia and Europe.
Rounding out the short list is U.K.-born cellist Ian Hampton’s “Jan in 35 Pieces: A Memoir in Music” (Porcupine’s Quill), reflecting on his years in Vancouver’s classical musical scene and the compositions that shaped his career.
The prize, established in 1998, will be handed out at a Toronto gala on March 4.
Each finalist will receive $5,000, with the winner taking home an additional $25,000.
The Canadian Press
