Butler prize finalists a varied group

Some of the city’s best-known authors are shortlisted for the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

The finalists are: • Arleen Paré for her poetry collection He Leaves his Face in the Funeral Car;

• Frances Backhouse for her non-fiction book Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver

• Pauline Holdstock for her novel The Hunter and the Wild Girl

• Laura Trunkey for her shortstory collection Double Dutch

• Tricia Dower for her novel Becoming Lin

The $5,000 prize is awarded to a Greater Victoria author for the best book published in the preceding year in the categories of fiction, non-fiction or poetry.

Paré’s first book, Paper Trail (2007), won a City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

Her 2014 poetry collection Lake of Two Mountains won a 2014 Governor General’s Award.

Backhouse is the author of five books, including Children of the Klondike, which won the 2010 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

Holdstock has won the Ethel Wilson Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Trunkey’s fiction has been published in journals and magazines across Canada, while New Jersey-born Dower won first prize in the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award in 2010.

The finalists for the Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize were also announced. They are Dawn Green for In the Swish, Jenny Manzer for Save Me Kurt Cobain and Robin Stevenson for The Summer We Saved the Bees.

The $5,000 Bolen Books prize is awarded to an author or illustrator for the best children’s book published in the preceding year.

The winners of both prizes will be announced at an awards gala Oct. 12 at the Union Club of British Columbia.

Tickets are $20 and are available at Bolen Books, Munro’s Books, Ivy’s Bookshop and the Victoria Book Prize Society (250-595-8430).