Brand, Richardson take Trillium awards
Ontario literary prizes worth up to $20,000 given to several writers
Poetry has dominated the 2019 Trillium book awards in English, with poets Dionne Brand and Robin Richardson winning prizes, while French honours went to Lisa L’Heureux and Diya Lim.
Brand won the English book prize, worth $20,000 for The
Blue Clerk (McClelland and Stewart). The book has garnered accolades and nominations, including, interestingly, for the Griffin Poetry Prize (here she wasn’t nominated in the poetry category). The book itself blurs the line between prose and poetry, with the Star’s reviewer saying: “Brand melds the intellectual with the sensory in these searching thinkpieces, as she wrestles with what poetry should be, takes stock of her past work and muses on formative experiences that have shaped her world view.”
Richardson’s Sit How You Want (Signal Editions/Véhicule Press), which won the $10,000 prize for poetry in English. The Star’s reviewer said that Richardson “wields an arsenal of striking turns of phrase in her volcanic third collection of poetry.”
In the French awards, the book prize went to Lisa L’Heureux for Et si un soir (Prise de parole) and, for children’s literature, Diya Lim for La marchande, la sorcière, la lune et moi (Les Éditions L’Interligne).
In total, 16 Ontario writers were nominated in the four categories, including Miriam Toews for Women Talking and Claudia Dey for Heartbreaker in the English book category.
It’s a lucrative prize for the writers and their publishers alike: winners in the book categories receive $20,000, with their publishers receiving $2,500. The winners of the poetry and children’s book prizes each receive $10,000, with their publisher receiving $2,000.
The Trillium Book Awards were first established to encourage and recognize excellent Ontario writing and to support the book publishing industry, which, in Canada, is worth $1.64 billion, according to the Trillium awards — two-thirds of it reportedly generated in Ontario.
Last year’s winner of the English book prize was Kyo Maclear for her work Birds Art Life, and for English poetry, Pino Coluccio for Class Clown. Previous winners of the award include Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Thomas King, Michael Ondaatje and François Paré.