Author Anne Bokma wins two Hamilton writing awards
Anne Bokma’s memoir about her search for spirituality outside of mainstream religion has won two Hamilton Literary Awards.
Bokma’s “My Year Of Living Spiritually: One Woman’s Secular Quest for a More Soulful Life” took the prize in the nonfiction category, as well as the Kerry Schooley Book Award for the work “most evocative of the Hamilton region.”
Marilyn Gear Pilling won the award for poetry with “The Gods of East Wawanosh,” while Michael Mirolla took the fiction category for “The Last News Vendor,” a novella about a man’s obsession with a onelegged newspaper salesman.
The winners of the 27th annual Hamilton Literary Awards were announced Sunday afternoon during a virtual telecast on Cable 14, hosted CBC Radio broadcaster Jeff Goodes.
Judges praised Bokma’s work for its “good humour and personal candour … as we learn much about seeking meaning and balance in life and finding comfort and solace in our relationships with family, friends and community.”
Other nominees in the poetry category were Paul Lisson for “The Perfect Archive,” Laura Furster for “The Absence of Thirteen,” Elizabeth Ross for “After Birth,” and Emma McKenna for “Chenille or Silk.”
Also nominated in the fiction category were Nahanni Shingoose for “Powwow Summer,” Nicola Winstanley for “How To Give Your Cat a Bath,” and John Corr for “Eight Times Up.”
Nominees f or t he Kerry Schooley Book Award also included David Baillie for “Little Bones,” Lisson for “The Perfect Archive,” Marg Heidebrecht for “In the Shade: Friendship, Loss and the Bruce Trail.”
In the non-fiction category, other nominees were Heidebrecht for “In the Shade: Friendship, Loss and the Bruce Trail,” Valerie Nielsen for “Golden Girl: A Child in Wartime England,” and Michael Mitchell for “Final Fire: A Memoir.”
Mitchell, an acclaimed film maker, photographer and writer, died at the age of 76 in May, 2020, before it was announced that his “Final Fire” had made the shortlist for the awards.
“Michael would have been so pleased and proud to be a finalist for the Hamilton Literary Awards,” his family said in a statement .“Although Michael lived in Toronto for many years, he was born, and died in Hamilton. After moving back in 2017, Michael found Hamilton visually seductive and by the winter of 2018/19 he was exploring new places and subjects through his filmmaking and photography, a project that was near completion before he fell ill.”
During the awards broadcast, nominees read from their shortlisted books. Mitchell’s son Jacob read on behalf of his father.
The 27th Hamilton Literary Awards were organized by the Hamilton Arts Council to celebrate works published by local authors in 2019. This year’s sponsors included Cable 14, Judy Marsales Real Estate, Susan Evans Shaw, and A Different Drummer Books.