We are honoured to share that Chelene Knight’s JUNIE (Book*hug Press) and Tara McGuire’s HOLDEN AFTER AND BEFORE: LOVE LETTER FOR A SON LOST TO OVERDOSE (Arsenal Pulp Press) are finalists in the 2023 City of Vancouver Book Awards!
The annual City of Vancouver Book Award has been recognizing authors of excellence of any genre since 1989. These authors contribute to the appreciation and understanding of Vancouver’s diversity, history, unique character, or the achievements of its residents.
The $3,000 prize is funded by our Publishing Reserve, which was established in 1977 as a permanent legacy for Vancouver writers and publishers.
The awards will be presented at the Vancouver Public Library (central branch) in the Alice MacKay Room on September 22.
Learn more here: https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/city-of-vancouver-book-award.aspx
About the selected books:
JUNIE by Chelene Knight is a riveting exploration of the complexity within mother-daughter relationships and the dynamic vitality of Vancouver’s former Hogan’s Alley neighbourhood.
1930s, Hogan’s Alley—a thriving Black and immigrant community located in Vancouver’s East End. Junie is a creative, observant child who moves to the alley with her mother, Maddie: a jazz singer with a growing alcohol dependency. Junie quickly makes meaningful relationships with two mentors and a girl her own age, Estelle, whose resilient and entrepreneurial mother is grappling with white scrutiny and the fact that she never really wanted a child.
As Junie finds adulthood, exploring her artistic talents and burgeoning sexuality, her mother sinks further into the bottle while the thriving neighbourhood—once gushing with potential—begins to change. As her world opens, Junie intuits the opposite for the community she loves.
Told through the fascinating lens of a bright woman in an oft-disquieting world, this book is intimate and urgent—not just an unflinching look at the destruction of a vibrant community, but a celebration of the Black lives within.
Chelene Knight is represented by Samantha J. Haywood.
HOLDEN AFTER AND BEFORE: LOVE LETTER FOR A SON LOST TO OVERDOSE by Tara McGuire is a moving meditation on grief: a stunning book that traces Tara McGuire’s excavation and documentation of the life path of her son Holden, a graffiti artist who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of twenty-one. Beginning with Holden’s death and leaping through time and space, McGuire employs fact, investigation, memory, fantasy, and even fabrication in her search for understanding not only of her son’s tragic death, but also of his beautiful life. She navigates and writes across the many blank spaces to form a story of discovery and humanity, examining themes of grief, pain, mental illness, trauma, creative expression, identity, and deep, unending love inside just one of the thousands of deaths that have occurred as a result of the opioid crisis.
With poignant honesty and a heart laid bare, Holden After and Before is a beautiful and moving elegy to a son lost to overdose.
Tara McGuire is represented by Marilyn Biderman.
Congratulations to the finalists!