The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Acadian Driftwood leads Atlantic Book Award winners
A family history dating back to the Acadian Expulsion of 1755, a posthumous book by one of Nova Scotia’s best-known writers and a novel detailing the complicated relationship between a white reporter and a wrongly imprisoned Nigerian woman are among the winners of the 2021 Atlantic Book Awards on Thursday night.
Presented during the virtual Atlantic Book Festival at www. atlanticbookawards.ca, the list of recipients saw Tyler Leblanc named twice for his painstakingly researched examination of his own family’s heritage, Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion (Goose Lane Editions).
Shortlisted in four categories, Leblanc’s account of the effects of this significant event in Acadian history received both the Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award and the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing.
With new research, a fresh perspective and additional insight into the effect of both French and British settlement on Indigenous communities, Leblanc hopes the attention from the awards will find new readers for Acadian Driftwood beyond the Atlantic Region.
“The response and the reach that it’s had so far, especially given that the book’s release has happened entirely within the context of the pandemic, has exceeded my expectations for where it’s gone so far,” said GOOSE LANE EDITIONS Leblanc, who would like to see the book distributed in Louisiana and translated into French.
“I’m hopeful that the recognition that it’s gotten from the awards continues to expand. Here in the region it can play an interesting role and become an educational tool, but I also would love to see it make its way across Canada so regions further away that don’t have much contact with this history can have a glimpse into it.”
Taking a page from more recent history, the late Cape Breton author Silver Donald Cameron’s Blood in the Water: A True Story of Revenge in the Maritimes won the Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award. Meanwhile, Cape Breton Magazine publisher and Breton Books founder Ronald Caplan earned the 2021 Pioneer Award for 50 years of contributions to Atlantic Canadian culture.
The Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious book prizes, was presented to Nova Scotia poet and author Anne Simpson for her third novel Speechless (Freehand Books), in which rookie reporter Sophie Macneil comes to the aid of teenager A’isha Nasir — sentenced to death for adultery under Sharia laws — with good, if misguided, intentions.
Thursday also saw the presentation of the first Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award, presented by the late poet’s sister Margaret Nyajeka to Tammy Armstrong for her collection Year of the Metal Rabbit (Gaspereau Press). The J.M. Abraham Poetry Award recipient was Halifax’s Afua Cooper for Black Matters (Roseway Publishing) with photography by Wilfried Raussert.
For the complete list of winners and shortlisted titles, visit www.atlanticbookawards.ca.