Winners of the 2006 Governor General's Literary Awards
Fiction
Peter Behrens, Brooklin, Maine (formerly of Montreal), for
The Law of Dreams
(House of Anansi Press; distributed by HarperCollins Canada) (ISBN 0-88784-207-0)
Biography
Peter Behrens is a native of Montreal, where he was educated at Lower Canada College, Concordia and McGill. He held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University, and was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Night Driving, a short-story collection, was published in 1987. His stories and essays have appeared in Brick, Best Canadian Stories, Best Canadian Essays, The Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Night and many anthologies. His first story published in the US, in The Atlantic Monthly, was optioned in Hollywood; he has written four feature screenplays. The Law of Dreams is his first novel. Peter Behrens lives in Brooklin, Maine.
Jury's comment
The Law of Dreams is an epic novel populated by extraordinary characters traversing the bleak moment of famine in Irish history. Peter Behrens, with authorial imagination and a wealth of historical detail, guides us through the blight with unparalleled intimacy.
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Poetry
John Pass, Madeira Park (BC), for Stumbling in the Bloom
(Oolichan Books; distributed by University of Toronto Press) (ISBN 0-88982-201-8)
Biography
John Pass, born in Sheffield, England, has lived in Canada since 1953. He has a BA in English from UBC (1969) and teaches at Capilano College. He has written 14 books; his poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada and abroad. He has won the CIVA Canada Poetry Prize (1988), the Gillian Lowndes Award (2001) and an award from the League of Canadian Poets. The Hour’s Acropolis was short listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (1992); Water Stair was also shortlisted for the Livesay Prize (2001) and the Governor General’s Literary Award (2000). John Pass lives in Madeira Park, B.C.
Jury's comment
John Pass’s poems are luminous meditations engaging us in form and style with emotion, spirit and thought. Stumbling in the Bloom approaches the world’s beauty with awe and tenderness, celebrating all that engulfs and eludes us.
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Drama
Daniel MacIvor, Halifax, for I Still Love You
(Playwrights Canada Press; distributed by the publisher) (ISBN 0-88754-858-X)
Biography
Daniel MacIvor has written and directed numerous award-winning plays, including You Are Here, How It Works and A Beautiful View. Never Swim Alone won the award for excellence at the New York Fringe (1998) and In On It a Village Voice Obie Award (2002). He is a five-time GG drama nominee, last year for Cul-de-sac. He is artistic director of the Toronto theatre company da da kamera. His film adaptation of his play Marion Bridge, also a GG nominee, won the CITY TV Best First Feature Award. His second feature, Wilby Wonderful, was released in 2004. Born in Cape Breton, Daniel MacIvor now lives in Halifax.
Jury's comment
A dazzling display of virtuosity and honesty, these plays demonstrate the author’s consummate theatricality, as well as his compelling humanity. Journeying from the archetypal male world of Never Swim Alone to the dynamic female world of A Beautiful View, this collection is quintessential MacIvor, breathtakingly innovative and overwhelmingly recognizable.
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Non fiction
Ross King, Woodstock, Oxon, UK (formerly of Saskatchewan), for
The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism
(Bond Street Books, an imprint of Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada; distributed by the publisher) (ISBN 0-385-66102-9 (bound) / (0-385-66103-7 (paper))
Biography
Born in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Ross King attended the University of Regina and received a Ph.D. in English Literature from York University. In 1992 he moved to London, England, to take a position at the University of London. King is the author of the bestselling Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2002), shortlisted for the GG and for a National Book Critics Circle Award in the U.S.; and the New York Times bestseller Brunelleschi's Dome (2000). He is also the author of two novels, Domino (1995) and Ex-Libris (1998). Ross King lives in Woodstock, near Oxford, England.
Jury's comment
The Judgment of Paris is nonfiction at its best. Ross King’s narrative, which evokes the rise of Impressionism, is layered with intrigue and high politics. He uses the artist Ernest Meissonier’s mastery of detail to create a sweeping portrait of a revolutionary decade.
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Children's literature (text)
William Gilkerson, Mahone Bay (NS), for Pirate’s Passage, illustrated by the author
(Trumpeter Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Shambhala Publications; distributed by Random House of Canada) (ISBN 1-59030-247-8)
Biography
William Gilkerson is a sailor, painter, journalist and historian. He is the author of ten non-fiction books on nautical topics as well as works of satire, art commentary and fiction, including The Scrimshander and Maritime Arts. His two-volume treatise on the development of ship’s weapons, Boarders Away, is a standard text. His drawings, watercolours and oils have been featured in several major exhibitions and have been anthologized and reproduced in books, magazines and on film. His paintings are internationally acknowledged to be among the finest contemporary maritime art. William Gilkerson lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.
Jury's comment
Steeped in wit, philosophy and mystical ambiguity, William Gilkerson’s Pirate’s Passage takes a maverick approach to history. A challenging children’s novel with a dangerous edge, Pirate’s Passage is a work of genius, a benchmark in Canadian literature.
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Children's literature (illustration)
Leo Yerxa, Ottawa, for Ancient Thunder, text by Leo Yerxa
(Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press; distributed by HarperCollins Canada)
(ISBN 0-88899-746-9)
Biography
Leo Yerxa was born on the Little Eagle Reserve in northwestern Ontario of Ojibway parents. An award-winning writer, illustrator and artist, he studied graphic arts at Algonquin College in Ottawa and fine arts at the University of Waterloo. His book Last Leaf, First Snowflake to Fall (1994) won the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award and the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award. He is also the author of the offbeat parable, A Fish Tale. Ancient Thunder, which celebrates wild horses and the natural world of the prairies, was several years in the making. Leo Yerxa lives in Ottawa.
Jury's comment
Through a unique creative process, and with poetic honesty, Leo Yerxa’s emotionally powerful images transport us, with the echo of ancient hoof-beats, over the Great Plains. Using the motif of traditional dress and a rich palette, Yerxa creates compositions that illustrate the mystical connection between horse and humanity.
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Translation
Hugh Hazelton, Montreal, for Vetiver
(Signature Editions; distributed by University of Toronto Press) (ISBN 1-897109-04-0)
English translation of Vétiver, by Joël Des Rosiers (Les éditions Triptyque)
Biography
Hugh Hazelton grew up in Chicago and Connecticut, and moved to Montreal in 1969. He has degrees in English (Yale, Concordia) and comparative literature (Sherbrooke). He has translated eight books. He translates primarily from French, Spanish and Portuguese into English, specializing in the work of Latin American authors living in Canada. He co-edited (with Gary Geddes), and was principal translator of, Compañeros: An Anthology of Writings about Latin America (1993). He is a poet, and the publisher of White Dwarf Editions, a small press specializing in poetry and short stories. Hugh Hazelton teaches Spanish at Concordia University in Montreal.
Jury's comment
Hugh Hazelton’s outstanding translation of Vétiver creatively maintains the rich, poetic narrative of Joël Des Rosiers’ powerful work. Hazelton clearly demonstrates his skill as a poet and translator, eloquently evoking “the sweet violence of Vetiver” through his ability to recreate Des Rosiers’ wide-ranging images and literary, historical and musical allusions, with personal and universal echoes.
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Biographical notes on French-language winners
Fiction
Andrée Laberge – La rivière du loup
Andrée Laberge is a doctor of epidemiology who combines her career as a writer with a career as a public health researcher. She also trained as a social worker and worked for many years with the disadvantaged. Her writing explores the incomprehensible in a profound and often disconcerting fashion, looking at family relationships, intolerance, the acceptance of difference and the search for meaning and the absolute. Her first novels, Les oiseaux de verre and L’aguayo, also reflect the author’s unique world. La rivière du loup, a finalist for the 2006 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, was three years in the making; it is her third novel. This is Andrée Laberge’s first GG. She lives in her native Quebec City.
Poetry
Hélène Dorion – Ravir : les lieux
Hélène Dorion is the author of more than 20 literary works and 15 books on artists; she is a member of the Académie des lettres du Québec and the Louise-Labé and Léopold-Senghor poetry juries. She has collaborated on a number of collective works, anthologies and periodicals. A retrospective of her poetry, Mondes fragiles (2006), has been translated and published in 12 countries, and has won several literary prizes, among them the Prix international de poésie Wallonie-Bruxelles and the International Poetry Prize of Romania. In 2005, she became the first Quebec author to receive the prestigious Académie Mallarmé poetry prize for Ravir : les lieux. A native of Quebec City, Hélène Dorion now lives in Saint-Hippolyte, Quebec.
Drama
Évelyne de la Chenelière – Désordre public
Playwright and actor Évelyne de la Chenelière studied drama at the École Michel-Granvale in Paris. Her play Des fraises en janvier, translated into English and German and presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, won a Masque for best original text from the Académie québécoise du théâtre. De la Chenelière has also created plays in collaboration with other authors, including Henri & Margaux with Daniel Brière, and Aphrodite en 04 with the late Jean-Pierre Ronfard (the latter experience inspired her to write Désordre public). This surprisingly mature young playwright recently produced her first feminist play, L'Éblouissement du chevreuil, presented at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in November 2006. This is her first GG. Évelyne de la Chenelière lives in Montreal.
Nonfiction
Pierre Ouellet – À force de voir : histoire de regards
Poet, essayist, novelist and researcher Pierre Ouellet is a professor of literature at UQAM, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in esthetics and poetics. He is co-director of Spirale magazine and director of the Spirale collection for Trait d’union publishers, and a member of the Centre d’études sur la langue, les arts et les traditions populaires des francophones en Amérique du Nord (CÉLAT). Ouellet’s studies focus on the question of identity in intercultural contexts; he lectures and gives seminars around the world. A three-time GG finalist, he has written 30 books and countless articles, and has won several prestigious prizes, including the Prix Ringuet, for Légende dorée. Pierre Ouellet lives in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec.
Children’s Literature (Text)
Dany Laferrière – Je suis fou de Vava
Journalist, TV and radio host, screenwriter, director and spokesperson for World Book and Copyright Day, Dany Laferrière began his career as a novelist with the phenomenally successful Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer, an instant bestseller that was translated into several languages and adapted for the screen. The author of more than 10 novels, he has won several awards, among them the first Prix Carbet des lycéens 2000 for Le cri des oiseaux fous and the Prix RFO du Livre 2002 for Cette grenade dans la main du jeune nègre est-elle une arme ou un fruit? Laferrière wins his first GG for Je suis fou de Vava, his first novel for children. Originally from Petit-Goâve, Haiti, Dany Laferrière lives in Montreal.
Children’s Literature (Illustration)
Rogé (Roger Girard) – Le gros monstre qui aimait trop lire, text by Lili Chartrand
As a child, Rogé knew that he wanted to be an artist. After earning a degree in graphic design at Université Laval, he worked in advertising for five years before working in international cooperation in the Dominican Republic. While there, he created large murals in a local village. He returned to Montreal, changed by this experience, and decided to devote himself to illustration. Since then, his creations have illustrated ad campaigns, posters and magazines, but it is the world of children’s literature and its lack of constraints that has given him the freedom to create, and develop his own style. He was a GG finalist in 2002. Rogé lives in Montreal.
Translation
Sophie Voillot – Un jardin de papier
Following studies in literature and linguistics (during which she won third prize in the Nouvelles fraîches competition), Sophie Voillot worked briefly as a screenwriter ― receiving a young creator’s grant along the way ― before turning to translation and terminology. A virtuoso in the use of words and images, she has published poems and short stories in various reviews; she painted in oils before embracing new technologies. For 20 years she has practiced the art of translation and has authored several literary translations. With Un jardin de papier, she wins her first GG. Born in Marseille, Sophie Voillot grew up in Quebec City and now lives in Montreal.