Established in 1994, the Alberta Book Awards recognize and celebrate the best of the Alberta book publishing industry. Each year, the Alberta Book Publishing Awards winners are selected through a peer jury process in up to 16 award categories. This much-anticipated event draws industry, government and media attention to the world-class excellence of Alberta’s publishing industry. The winners of the 2022 Alberta Book Publishing Awards will be announced at a gala reception, held at the Hotel Arts in Calgary on September 16, 2022.
THIS STRANGE VISIBLE AIR: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life by Sharon Butala (Freehand Books) has been selected for the Trade Nonfiction Book of the Year Shortlist for the 2022 Alberta Books Awards. Sharon Butala is an award-winning author of more than twenty books, numerous articles and essays, poetry, and five published plays. She has three times been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. In 2002 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. She lives in Calgary.
BIG READER by Susan Olding (Freehand Books) has been selected for the Trade Nonfiction Book of the Year Shortlist for the 2022 Alberta Books Awards. Susan Olding’s debut collection, Pathologies: A Life in Essays, was selected by 49th Shelf and Amazon.ca as one of 100 Canadian books to read in a lifetime. Her newest book is Big Reader: Essays. Her essays, fiction, and poetry appear widely in literary journals and anthologies throughout North America, and her work has won a National Magazine Award, the Edna Staebler Prize for the Personal Essay, and other honours. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. She lives in the traditional territories of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, in Victoria, British Columbia.
GREAT ADVENTURES FOR THE FAINT OF HEART by Cary Fagan (Freehand Books) has been selected for the Trade Nonfiction Book of the Year Shortlist for the 2022 Alberta Books Awards. Cary Fagan is the author of six novels and four story collections for adults, as well as many award-winning books for children. His books include The Student (finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Toronto Book Prize), A Bird?s Eye (finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize), and the story collection My Life Among the Apes (longlisted for the Giller Prize). Cary was born and raised in Toronto, where he lives with his family.
Sharon is represented by Marilyn Biderman. Susan and Cary are represented by Samantha Haywood.
To see the full list of winners, please visit: https://bookpublishers.ab.ca/programs/awards/#A2