Ottawa Book Awards: Fiction
Awarded for outstanding published works of fiction including novels, short stories, children’s literature and poetry.
Alan Cumyn, Tilt (Groundwood Books)
Jamieson Findlay , The Summer of Permanent Wants (Doubleday Canada)
Elizabeth Hay, Alone in the Classroom (McClelland & Stewart)
Frances Itani, REQUIEM (HarperCollins Publishers)
Shane Rhodes, Err (Nightwood Editions)
Ottawa Book Awards: Non-fiction
Awarded for outstanding published works of non-fiction including biographies, memoirs, cultural histories, literary journalism and essays.
Damien-Claude Bélanger, Prejudice and Pride: Canadian Intellectuals Confront the United States, 1891-1945 (University of Toronto Press)
Murray Brewster, The Savage War: The Untold Battles of Afghanistan
(John Wiley & Sons Canada)
Robert R. Fowler, A Season in Hell: My 130 Days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda (HarperCollins Publishers)
Craig Oliver,Oliver’s Twist: The Life and Times of an Unapologetic Newshound (Viking Canada)
Ruth B. Phillips, Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
(For outstanding books published in French, see the 2012 Prix du livre finalists.)
Ottawa Book Awards: Fiction
 Alan Cumyn
Tilt
As much as Stan Dart wants to hide while adolescence passes, in Alan Cumyn’s Tilt nothing is the same after Janine Igwash crosses his basketball court and disappears into the night. Stan is betrayed by his body, his heart, and his need for whatever stability his exploded family can provide. Tilt delights in the passions, delusions and essential truths of being a sixteen-year-old boy. |
 Credit: Anna Cumyn Alan Cumyn, a recent past chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, is a two-time winner of the Ottawa Book Award, and has also had novels shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award. His wide-ranging work includes seven novels for adults and four for younger readers.
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 Jamieson Findlay
The Summer of Permanent Wants
After losing her powers of speech due to a mysterious illness, eleven-year-old Emmeline joins her Gran on a journey along the Rideau Canal system in a boat (Permanent Wants) that is also a bookstore. Picardy Bob, Consolata LeGrand and a carnival of other characters appear around every bend in this poignant ode to the redemptive powers of story-telling. |
 Credit: Patrick Dumais Jamieson Findlay was born in Ottawa and educated at Queen’s University. He worked as a science journalist for a number of years, mainly for such magazines as Saturday Night and Canadian Geographic, before turning to fiction. He is the author of a previous novel, The Blue Roan Child (2002).
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 Elizabeth Hay
Alone in the Classroom
Alone in the Classroom is a novel about how the past resides in the present. At its heart is a love-and-hate triangle between a principal, a teacher and a student. In the background, but ultimately coming to the fore, is the mysterious rape and murder of a young girl in the Ottawa Valley. |
 Credit: Lorraine Brand Elizabeth Hay is the author of eight books, among them the novel Late Nights on Air, which won the Ottawa Book Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Formerly a radio broadcaster, she spent a number of years in Mexico and New York City before returning to Canada and settling in Ottawa twenty years ago.
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 Frances Itani
REQUIEM
In Requiem, Bin Okuma, a visual artist, journeys into his past and crosses Canada by car with his faithful hound, Basil, in tow. The journey leads him towards First Father and into stored memories of childhood in an internment camp in B.C.’s mountainous interior; of family; of marriage to Lena and the importance of music and art to their lives. |
 Credit: Ottawa Public Library Foundation Frances Itani, a Member of the Order of Canada, has written 15 books, including Remembering the Bones and Deafening, a #1 bestseller which won a Commonwealth Prize and was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award. A three-time winner of the CBC Literary Award, she has twice won the Ottawa Book Award.
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 Shane Rhodes
Err
Sex, booze, war and wordplay collide loquaciously in Err, the latest collection from innovative and accomplished poet Shane Rhodes. A master of alliteration, allusion, rhyme and rhythm, Rhodes shakes up a verbal cocktail of vibrant musicality that appeals to the imagination and remains in the memory. This distinctive collection makes for delightful, unusual and engaging reading. |
 Credit: Charles Earl Shane Rhodes is the author of five collections of poetry and the winner of the Alberta Book Award for poetry, as well as the two-time winner of the Archibald Lampman Award (formerly the Lampman-Scott Award). His poetry has also appeared in a number of poetry anthologies. Rhodes lives in Ottawa. |
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Ottawa Book Awards: Non-Fiction
 Damien-Claude Bélanger
Prejudice and Pride: Canadian Intellectuals Confront the United States, 1891-1945
Prejudice and Pride examines and compares how English and French Canadian intellectuals viewed American society from 1891 to 1945. The book argues that both groups shared common preoccupations when it came to the United States, and that Canadian discourse regarding American life and the Canadian-American relationship was less an expression of nationalism or a reaction to US policy than it was the expression of wider attitudes concerning modernity. |
D.C. Bélanger is an Assistant Professor of Canadian history at the University of Ottawa and a co-founder of Mens, Quebec’s journal of intellectual and cultural history. A graduate of the Université de Montréal and McGill, his research focusses on French Canadian intellectual history and Canadian-American relations.
 Credit: Robert Lacombe, University of Ottawa |
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 Murray Brewster
The Savage War: The Untold Battles of Afghanistan
The Savage War: The Untold Battles of Afghanistan: Is a riveting first-person account of Canada’s war in Afghanistan with a narrative that stretches from Ottawa to Kandahar and back again. Praised by The Globe and Mail as “seductively written” and important for setting the record straight, the book examines, in gritty detail, the country’s policy choices and the tragic consequences for both soldiers and Afghan civilians alike. |
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Murray Brewster is a senior defence writer for The Canadian Press. He spent 15 months in Afghanistan during the five year combat mission, was among the first Canadian journalists into New York following the 9/11 attacks and was on the scene for the London train bombings of 2005. A journalist for 28 years, he has won 11 national awards
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 Robert R. Fowler
A Season in Hell: My 130 Days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda
Bob Fowler and Louis Guay were kidnapped by Al Qaeda and spent 130 days as hostages in the Sahara in 2009, gaining first-hand insight into the motivations of the world’s most feared terror group. A Season in Hell is Fowler’s story of his captivity, as well as a frank discussion about the state of a world redefined by clashing civilizations. |
 Credit: Cartright Bob Fowler, an Ottawa native, was Foreign Policy Advisor to PMs Trudeau, Turner and Mulroney, Deputy Minister of National Defence, Ambassador to the UN and Italy, and Personal Representative for Africa of Chrétien, Martin and Harper. He retired in of 2006 and is a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa.
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 Craig Oliver
Oliver’s Twist: The Life and Times of an Unapologetic Newshound
As chief parliamentary correspondent for CTV News, Craig Oliver is one of Canada’s most recognized and respected journalists, a newsman who has reported on the major political figures and news stories of our times with passion, insight, and bracing candour. He brings those same qualities to this many-layered memoir of an extraordinary professional and personal life. |
 Credit: CTV Craig Oliver is currently Chief Parliamentary Correspondent for CTV and co-host of its weekly political affairs program Question Period. He has received the highest awards granted by his profession, including the prestigious Charles Lynch Award, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Gold Ribbon for Broadcast Excellence, and many more.
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 Ruth B. Phillips
Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums
Museum Pieces analyses the important questions of indigenous representation in Canadian museums over the past four decades. A manifesto that calls on us to re-imagine the museum as a place to embrace global interconnectedness, Museum Pieces emphasizes the transformative power of museum controversy and analyses shifting ideas about art, authenticity, and power in the modern museum. |
Ruth Phillips holds a Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Art and Culture and is Professor of Art History at Carleton University. A former director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, she has researched and written on critical museology and the arts of Africa and Indigenous North America. |
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