Patrick Lane, author of Red Dog, Red Dog was named the 2009 winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. Mayor Dean Fortin and event sponsor Brian H. Butler, presented Lane with a cheque for $5,000 for his novel, published by McClelland & Stewart. An epic novel of unrequited dreams and forestalled lives, the book is set in the mid-1950‘s, in a small town in the interior of BC. The novel focuses on the Stark family, centering on brothers Eddy and Tom, who are bound together by family loyalty and inarticulate love. This is a first novel for Lane, who is a renowned and much awarded poet.

Penny Draper, author of Graveyard of the Sea won the $5,000 Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize. Mel Bolen presented the prize for the book, which is set in 1906 at a lighthouse on the rugged coast of Vancouver Island. The book tells the story of Nell, a young girl who helps her father with the lighthouse. When the government runs a telegraph line to the lighthouse, Nell teaches herself Morse Code. And when the Valencia gets in trouble on the rocks below, Nell sends her first SOS. Draper has been storytelling for year and is currently writing historical fiction for youth.