Prohibition prose in running for crime fiction prize

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This article was published 25/03/2023 (1296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ontario crime novelist Brad Smith has been shortlisted for the Hammett Prize for crime writing for his Prohibition-era novel Copperhead Road, published by Winnipeg’s At Bay Press.

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The prize, bestowed since 1991 by the North American branch of the International Association of Crime Writers, is for works in English by writers from the U.S. or Canada.

Smith’s book shares the shortlist with Gangland, by Chuck Hogan; Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor; Pay Dirt Road, by Samantha Jayne Allen; and What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline. The winner will be announced this summer.

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The annual CBC battle of the books, Canada Reads, kicks off Monday with five prominent Canadians debating books from a wide range of genres.

Record-setting Jeopardy! champion Mattea Roach will represent Kate Beaton’s autobiographical graphic novel, Ducks, about the author’s experience working in Alberta’s oil sands. Actress/director Keegan Connor Tracy (from the series Once Upon a Time) will represent Greenwood, Michael Christie’s novel about a guide on a remote island after a global environmental collapse. Gurdeep Pandher, known for his videos of bhangra dancing in scenic Canadian settings, will represent Hotline, Dimitri Nasrallah’s novel about a refugee from Lebanon’s 1980s civil war working on a weight-loss hotline. TikTok book influencer Tasnim Geedi will discuss Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s horror novel Mexican Gothic, currently listed as in development by Hulu TV. Actor Michael Greyeyes (from True Detective and Blood Quantum) will represent Emily St. John Mandel’s literary post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven, which was made into an HBO series last year.

The debates will run March 27-30 on CBC TV and Radio.

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Canadian Camilla Grudova joins eight other debut novelists on this year’s longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a British-based prize for women writing in in English.

Grudova, a McGill University graduate who now lives in Edinburgh, is nominated for her novel Children of Paradise, about a woman drawn into a circle of outsiders at a movie theatre. She previously published a short-story collection, The Doll’s Alphabet.

In addition to the debut novelists, the 16-book long list features two past winners: 2010 winner Barbara Kingsolver, nominated for Demon Copperhead, a novel set amid the opioid crisis in Appalachia and a homage to Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield; and 2020 winner Maggie O’Farrell, nominated for The Marriage Portrait, an imagining of the life of the daughter of Cosimo de Medici, ruler of Renaissance Florence.

Another high-profile name on the list is NoViolet Bulawayo, previously shortlisted for the Booker Prize, nominated for the Women’s Prize for Glory, inspired both by George Orwell’s Animal Farm and by corruption in her native Zimbabwe.

The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced June 14.

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A paper published in the U.S. by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that for the first time ever, women are now publishing more books than men.

Economist Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota analyzed data from the Library of Congress, Amazon, Bookstat and Goodreads to conclude that by 2020, women were publishing more than 50 per cent of books (presumably in the U.S.) — up from around 20 per cent in the 1970s. Books by women also outsold those by men.

For more information on the study, see wfp.to/0wN.

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One-time Winnipegger Alissa York hits town Thursday to launch her new novel, Far Cry (Random House of Canada).

The novel is a story of forbidden love and chosen family set in a remote B.C. salmon cannery in 1922.

Former Winnipegger York, who teaches creative writing in Toronto at the Humber School for Writers, is the author of novels Mercy (set in a small Manitoba town), Effigy, Fauna and The Naturalist, as well as short fiction collection, Any Given Power.

The launch starts at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, and will be hosted by Bruce Symaka. It will also be streamed on their YouTube channel.

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