Ten nominees are in the running for the 2024 Victoria Book Prizes, per an announcement today by the City of Victoria.
Three poets — Ali Blythe (who is nominated for his book, Stedfast), Arleen Paré (Absence of Wings), and Shō Yamagushiku (Shima) — join authors Tim Lilburn (Numinous Seditions: Interiority and Climate Change) and Kathryn Mockler (Anecdotes) in competition for the $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, now in its 21st year.
The prize honours the year’s best fiction, non-fiction, or poetry book by a writer from the Capital Regional District. The nominees were chosen by a jury from the local literary arts community from more than 50 books published between April 2023 and March 2024.
Five more authors — including Raina Delisle (who is nominated for Breaking News: Why Media Matters), Leslie Gentile (Shamus the Urban Rez Dog, P.I.), Polly Horvath (Pine Island Visitors), Julie Lawson (Out of the Dark), and Crystal Smith (Maybe a Whale) — are vying for the $5,000 City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize. Now in its 17th year, the prize goes to the best book published in the genre of children’s and youth literature by an author from the Capital Regional District.
The winners of both prizes will be announced during a gala at at the Union Club of British Columbia on Oct. 16. Tickets for the event, produced by the Victoria Book Prize Society and hosted by CBC Victoria’s Kathryn Marlow, are available now on eventbrite.ca.
For more information, visit victoriabookprizes.ca.
