The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Sooke-based author Darrel J. McLeod is one of five nominees for this year’s Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, a $60,000 honour recognizing a work of non-fiction by a Canadian writer.
Questions of identity are front and centre on this year’s short list and McLeod is in the running for his examination of the complexities of Indigenous identity in Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity, A Memoir, published by Douglas & McIntyre.
Other contenders include Toronto author and poet Ian Williams, who won the Giller Prize in 2019, for his form-breaking reflections on race in Disorientation: Being Black in the World, published by Random House Canada.
Also in the running is Gatineau, Que.-based Thomson Highway’s story of coming of age in a Cree-speaking family Permanent Astonishment: A Memoir, from Doubleday Canada.
Edmonton’s Jordan Abel is nominated for NISHGA, from McClelland & Stewart, about Indigenous artistry in a colonized space, while Ken Haigh of Clarksburg, Ont., is recognized for retracing medieval routes in On Foot to Canterbury: A Son’s Pilgrimage, from University of Alberta Press.
The winner will be announced at a digital ceremony on Nov. 3. Each finalist receives $5,000.
