Long list for non-fiction prize announced

TORONTO — Non-fiction books about enduring love, solitude in the digital era and life as an ER doctor are among the titles on the RBC Taylor Prize long list.

Contenders for the $30,000 award include James Maskalyk’s Life on the Ground Floor: Letters From the Edge of Emergency Medicine (Doubleday Canada), which recently won the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Also on the list is Mandy Len Catron’s How to Fall in Love with Anyone (Simon & Schuster) and Michael Harris’s Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World (Doubleday Canada).

A short list will be revealed Jan. 10, 2018, while the winner will be announced on Feb. 26, 2018. Authors of the other shortlisted titles get $5,000 each.

Jurors read 153 books submitted by 110 Canadian and international publishers.

Other books on the long list are: • Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on Bering’s Great Voyage to Alaska (Douglas & McIntyre) by Stephen R. Bown • Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place (Wolsak and Wynn Publishers) by Daniel Coleman • The Marriott Cell: An Epic Journey from Cairo’s Scorpion Prison to Freedom (Random House Canada) by Mohamed Fahmy and Carol Shaben • A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land (Allen Lane Canada/Penguin Random House Canada) by Adam Shoalts • Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City (House of Anansi Press) by Tanya Talaga • In the Name of Humanity (Allen Lane Canada/Penguin Random House Canada) by Max Wallace • Apron Strings: Navigating Food and Family in France, Italy, and China (Goose Lane Edition) by Jan Wong.