Congrats to the 2023 NLBA winners!
Sending a huge thanks to everyone who joined us for this year’s Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards, honouring the categories of Poetry and Non-Fiction – Check out all event photos by the incredible Christopher Deacon on our Facebook page!
L-R: Wendy Rose, Kelley Power, Daniel Banoub, Pam Hall, Laurabel Mba, Kerri Cull, Jen Winsor
Congrats as well to our shortlisted and longlisted authors:
Non-Fiction: Daniel Banoub, Kerri Cull, Mary Dalton, Dr. Hassan Khalili, and Ida Linehan Young
Perfect Day, Saltwire, Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers Association, RogersTV, Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the City of St. John’s, the Power Family, the Pratt Family, and jury members: Annick MacAskill, Sharon Berg, Beth Follett, Joan Sullivan, Evan Careen, and Evelyn White.
Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards 2023: Jury Announcement + Jury Comments!
(September 21, 2023) – WritersNL is pleased to share this year’s NLBA jurors, as well as our jury’s comments about the shortlisted books for the 2023 E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award, and the 2023 Power Family Non-Fiction Award.
We hope you can join us for this year’s Awards Ceremonies – Keep scrolling for event details!
Jury names + juror comments on 2023’s shortlisted works are listed below. Congrats again to all longlisted and shortlisted authors, and thanks to our phenomenal jury for their involvement in this year’s Awards.
Thank you to our 2023 NLBA jurors for their hard work!
Poetry: Annick MacAskill, Sharon Berg and Beth Follett
Non-Fiction: Joan Sullivan, Evan Careen, and Evelyn White
We greatly appreciate your time, dedication, and invaluable insights in selecting this year’s longlist, shortlist, and winner.
The 2023 E.J. Pratt Family Poetry NL Book Award Shortlist: Juror Comments
The Debt by Andreae Callanan
Biblioasis, 2021
Rhythmic and engaging, Andreae Callanan’s The Debt offers up keen observations of the poet’s inner and outer worlds. The collection follows its central figure from childhood through to middle age in well-crafted lyrics that reveal an impressive attention to phrasing and sound.
Both burden and blessing, the debt at the heart of this book is one of belonging to a place and a people. With this sense of belonging comes a quiet but consistent current of resistance, as Callanan subtly tackles and condemns reductive forces such as sexism and colonialism.
From an unconventional sonnet corona to an understated aubade, the poems in this collection offer formal variation, and are at once wry and sensitive. The Debt is a most promising and resonant debut.
Passengers by Michael Crummey
House of Anansi Press, 2022
Michael Crummey achieves a page-turning, documentary quality in his verse, and this is most certainly true in his current collection, Passengers. Indeed, he offers a true saga, however imaginative it may be.
Passengers presents the reader with several stories: one, a circumnavigation of Newfoundland by Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer; another, travel poems set in European cities; and finally there are conjured observations of Lucifer in Newfoundland, recorded by local storytellers across centuries.
This book explores the far distant past even as it unearths truths about the present in a way that gives ordinary events a shimmering quality. Crummey has stitched his various topics together in a compilation that’s either chutzpah, from the Yiddish meaning for nerve, or hazard, from the Arabic meaning for a game of chance. Yet, as always, Crummey’s end focus is a deep and loving exploration of the human heart with all of its inherent gifts and foibles.
Lurch by Don McKay
McClelland & Stewart, 2021
In Lurch, Don McKay continues his years-long meditation on the ecology of the Anthropocene, the fragility of relationships, animals lost to extinction, and aspects of our physical world far beyond living memory.
As said of other McKay works, his latest collection “is a triumph of lyricism and linguistic orchestration” (Griffin judges’ citation). The sheer diversity of his earthly conditions, the interactions and connections he crafts, sounds and cadences in his diction, and the sturdy gait of his lyrics result in a lightness and quickness characteristic of his poetry.
These poems all point to an extravagant generosity of poetic spirit. Lurch is filled with elegant, playful, or downright funny verses that move the reader with an uncanny tolerance for, as McKay says, the “affable and unhuman, the ancient/ geologic joke I almost always/ not quite but very nearly get.”
The 2023 Power Family Non-Fiction NL Book Award Shortlist: Juror Comments
Fishing Measures: A Critique of Desk-Bound Reason by Daniel Banoub
Memorial University Press, 2021
Infinitely readable and relevant in an era of diminishing natural resources in seemingly every realm, Fishing Measures chronicles the ways in which so-called scientific experts attempted to improve Newfoundland’s saltfish industry.
Author Daniel Banoub’s deeply researched dive into the emergence of cod liver oil as a vitamin packed curative for (especially) children is sure to trigger memories for everyone who shuddered when a spoonful of the concoction approached their lips.
A volume that sets, in stark relief, the know-how of rubber-booted Newfoundland anglers against the “advice” of pencil-pushing desk jockeys, Fishing Measures serves as a primer for the age-old adage to “leave well enough alone.”
Archival black and white photos of fishers processing and selling their catch enhance the book. Those who tracked the capitalist-driven soft drink debacle that was “New Coke” will note similar themes in Banoub’s well-wrought analysis of money, marketing, and purported fisheries science.
Rock Paper Sex Volume 2: Trigger Warning by Kerri Cull
Breakwater Books, 2021
Building on the success of the first volume, Rock Paper Sex Volume 2: Trigger Warning continues to shine a light on an often misunderstood and demonized industry in North America’s oldest city.
Kerri Cull does a great job of giving a voice to those who are often voiceless, sharing their experiences in their own words. It strips back some of the veil around sex work, and sex workers, in St. John’s, showing they are just people like everyone else, facing many of the same challenges as the other denizens of the city, plus battling the perceptions around what they do to pay the bills.
The range of experiences she shares are impressive, encompassing many facets of the industry, ranging from the owner of a massage parlour to trans escorts who work from their homes to community groups. Rock Paper Sex 2: Trigger Warning is a worthy successor to Cull’s previous work, adding more depth to the topic and people who work in what can still be a very dangerous industry.
Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, Chapter III: Miawpukek – The Middle River by Pam Hall, Jerry Evans
Breakwater Books, 2022
By word origin encyclopedia comes to us from the Greek and means a general or all-round education. This third chapter of Towards a Local Knowledge befits and stretches this definition. The series itself has consistently demonstrated legacy-worthy content and design and here again fills a gap of tradition, science, know-how, and lore, arriving with pitch perfect timing amidst concerns of and attention to knowledge conservation, guardianship, and stewardship.The crisp layout presents the curated wisdom of almost 70 individual contributors not just in two languages side-by-side but embedded with a visual lexicon. Truly an encyclopedic knowledge – thorough, trustworthy, attested. The chapters include “Powwow: Why And How We Gather”; “What Martha Knows About Beading On A Loom”; “Where Wish Benoit Went For What”: the topics; dancing, hunting, beading, berrypicking, wayfinding, games, medicine, cuisine, ritual and regalia; and the knowledge imparted not just how to build a canoe but how to harvest the birch bark and treat the seams, not just how to hunt a moose but how to call it and tan the hide. This is a whole and holistic way of being in the world. In pedigree and experience visual artists Pam Hall’s and Jerry Evans’ resumes are studded with community-minded, socially attuned projects. As in Knowledge, their artworks are not separate from anything else, but in the sinew, weaving and spearing, healing and dance of their subjects.
Join us for the 2023 NLBAs!
Both readings + winner announcement events will be held in St. John’s at the A.C. Hunter Public Library.
The 2023 NLBAs will be broadcast by RogersTV and hosted by Laurabel Mba (pictured to the right).
• The E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award readings + winner announcement will take place on
Tuesday, September 26, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
Click here to register to tune in via Webex.
• The Power Family Non-Fiction Award readings + winner announcement will take place on
Wednesday, September 27, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
Click here to register to tune in via Webex.
Click here to RSVP to the NLBAs via Facebook. See you there!
Check out WritersNL’s shortlist for the 2023 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards!
(September 14, 2023) – WritersNL is ecstatic to share this year’s shortlist for the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards (NLBAs).
The 2023 awards honour two categories – the E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award, and the Power Family Non-Fiction Award.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards are held annually by WritersNL to recognize excellence in writing by authors residing in Newfoundland and Labrador, and WritersNL hopes you can join us for this year’s Awards Ceremonies – Keep scrolling for event details.
Shortlist authors are listed alphabetically by last name below. Congrats, folks!
The 2023 E.J. Pratt Family Poetry
NL Book Award Shortlist
• The Debt by Andreae Callanan
• Passengers by Michael Crummey
• Lurch by Don McKay
The 2023 Power Family Non-Fiction
NL Book Award Shortlist
• Rock Paper Sex Volume 2: Trigger Warning by Kerri Cull• Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, Chapter III: Miawpukek – The Middle River by Pam Hall, Jerry Evans
Join us for the 2023 NLBAs!
Both readings + winner announcement events will be held in St. John’s at the A.C. Hunter Public Library.The 2023 NLBAs will be broadcast by RogersTV, and live-streamed via Webex.• The E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award readings + winner announcement will take place on
Tuesday, September 26, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
Click here to register to tune in via Webex.• The Power Family Non-Fiction Award readings + winner announcement will take place on
Wednesday, September 27, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
Click here to register to tune in via Webex.Click here to RSVP to the NLBAs via Facebook. See you there!
2023 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards Longlist Announcement
(September 6, 2023) – WritersNL is pleased to announce the longlist for the 2023 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards (NLBAs).
The Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards are held annually by WritersNL to recognize excellence in writing by authors residing in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In 2023, we are honouring two categories – the E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award, and the Power Family Non-Fiction Award.
Longlisted authors are listed alphabetically by last name below. Congrats to all!
The 2023 Power Family Non-Fiction NL Book Award Longlist
• Fishing Measures: A Critique of Desk-Bound Reason by Daniel Banoub
• Rock Paper Sex Volume 2: Trigger Warning by Kerri Cull
• The Vernacular Strain in Newfoundland Poetry by Mary Dalton
• Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge: Chapter III, Miawpukek – The Middle River by Pam Hall, Jerry Evans
• A Life Spent Listening by Dr. Hassan Khalili
• If I Cry I’ll Fill An Ocean by Ida Linehan Young
The 2023 E.J. Pratt Family Poetry NL Book Award Longlist
• The Debt by Andreae Callanan
• Romantic by Mark Callanan
• Passengers by Michael Crummey
• Lurch by Don McKay
• Problematica by George Murray
• Land of the Rock: Talamh An Carrig by Heather Nolan
Join us for the 2023 NLBAs!
• The 2023 NLBAs Shortlist will be announced on September 14, 2023.
Both readings + winner announcement events will be held in St. John’s at the A.C. Hunter Public Library.
The 2023 NLBAs will be broadcast by RogersTV, and live-streamed via Webex.
• The E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award readings + winner announcement will take place on
Tuesday, September 26, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
Click here to register to tune in via Webex.
• The Power Family Non-Fiction Award readings + winner announcement will take place on
Wednesday, September 27, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
Click here to register to tune in via Webex.
Click here to RSVP to the NLBAs via Facebook. See you there!
See you there!
You’re invited to the 2023 NLBAs!
2023 NLBA Event Schedule:
The E.J. Pratt Family Poetry Award:
• Tuesday, September 26, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
The Power Family Non-Fiction Award:
• Wednesday, September 27, 2023 @ 6:00 p.m. NST
View the Facebook event by clicking here.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards are held annually by WritersNL to recognize excellence in writing by authors in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Power Family Award for Non-fiction
&
The E.J. Pratt Poetry Award
The NLBAs celebrate and honour excellence in writing by authors in Canada’s easternmost province and are made possible by the generous support of sponsors.
The author of the winning book in each category (Non-fiction and Poetry) will receive $1,500.
Two runners-up per category will be selected. Each runner-up will receive $500.
Submission Deadline: Received by Friday, July 14 at 5 p.m. NST
Residency Requirement:
The awards are open only to residents of Newfoundland and Labrador.
For the purposes of these awards, a resident is defined as a person who has lived in Newfoundland and Labrador for the 12 months immediately prior to the date of publication
OR
who has lived in Newfoundland and Labrador in any combination of 36 of the last 60 months.
The residency period for the 2023 awards is the five calendar years of 2017-2022.
An award may be presented posthumously to an author who has met the residency requirement.
One Author must currently meet 12-month residency requirement
The second author must have met the 12-month residency requirement within the last five years.
Eligibility:
– Books published between January 1st, 2021, and December 31st, 2022.
– Normally works shall be single-authored; however, submissions by no more than two authors will be considered provided that both authors have contributed equally to the production of a single narrative. In the event that a book written by two authors is selected as an award winner or runner-up, the associated prize money will be divided equally between the two authors. (*NEW*)
– Either the author or the publisher may enter a title.
– Books must be in English.
– Books that have been translated are eligible. However, in the case of a translated book, the award is to go exclusively to the author.
– Self-published books are eligible provided they are professionally produced (i.e. printed and bound by a commercial printer).
– Collected or selected works by a single author are eligible provided at least 50% of the text is previously unpublished material.
– Books that contain other media in addition to writing (e.g. photos, CDs, graphics, illustrations) are eligible; however, the award will be given only to the author of the book’s text and only for the writing.
– Books containing material not written by the author (e.g. letters, diaries, memoirs, blogs, oral histories, selected writings) are eligible provided at least 50% of the text is written by the author (e.g. introduction, exposition, commentary, reporting, narrative, footnotes, epilogue).
– The following are not eligible for the NL Book Awards: anthologies with more than one author: audiobooks; unpublished manuscripts; textbooks; self-help or how-to books; manuals or guidebooks on any subject (e.g. travel, nature, cooking); dictionaries; encyclopedias.
– Revised editions will be considered when the following conditions are met:
a) The book has not been previously submitted to the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards; and
b) In the opinion of the Literary Awards Committee, the book contains new material to the extent that it is not merely a re-issue of a previous publication
– Current members of WritersNL’s Literary Awards Committee are not eligible for the NL Book Awards.
– Final decisions on the eligibility of submitted entries remain with WritersNL’s Literary Awards Committee.
– WritersNL reserves the right not to present the award should there not be enough entries for competitive adjudication.
Assessment Process:
– Assessment of all eligible submissions to the NL Book Awards will be adjudicated by independent juries recruited and facilitated by the WritersNL.
– A jury with appropriate literary expertise will be convened for each award.
– The independent jury for each award will submit a longlist of six books, a shortlist of three books, and a winning book from that shortlist.
– The paramount consideration is excellence in writing. Jurors should reflect on creativity, wordsmithing, and originality.
– A juror must disclose any conflict of interest. WritersNL defines conflict of interest in terms of whether a juror stands to gain any financial benefit through association with a submitted title, or if the juror stands to gain from any moral or intellectual rights, or if the juror has a significant personal relationship with the author of a submitted title. If there is a conflict of interest, the juror will be asked to step aside.
– The decisions made by the NL Book Award juries are final.
Submission Procedures:
– Include four (4) non-returnable, professionally printed and bound copies of each book.
– Include a signed letter stating the category entered and confirming that all submission requirements have been met. Please also note your total word count, and page count.
– Include the non-refundable entry fee that applies to you:
• Free submission for WritersNL members paying full membership fee
• $15 submission fee per title for WritersNL members paying $25 membership fee
• $40 submission fee per title for non-WritersNL members
Submit your books to:
Newfoundland & Labrador Book Awards
c/o WritersNL
223 Duckworth Street, Suite 202
St. John’s, NL A1C 6N1
Drop off hours:
Applicants can drop off their submissions to the WritersNL office in person every Tuesday from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Please note that the WritersNL office is not accessible.
Curb-side pick-up is also available by calling 709-739-5215. Please pull up outside of the building, call the number listed above, and a WritersNL representative can pick up your submissions from the trunk of your car.
PLEASE NOTE:
• Ineligible and/or incomplete submissions will not be returned, and entry fees will not be refunded.
• All books and materials submitted become the property of the WritersNL and will be used for jury members, sponsors, and promotional activities.
• Late submissions will not be accepted.
Submission Deadline: Received by Friday, July 14, 2023 at 5 p.m. NST
Click here for information on our 2022 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards in the categories of Fiction and Children’s/Young Adult.