Shortlist 2023!
We are excited to announce our 2023 Shortlist!
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Hesitating Once to Feel Glory by Maleea Acker (Nightwood Editions) – Poetry
- Hesitating Once to Feel Glory cartwheels from sadness to glory, then breaks into blossoms in a drought-struck landscape of longing. These are poems filled with daring leaps and precise, deft metaphors. They cajole and praise both the world and interior life with an erotic charge and enduring hope.
- Maleea Acker lives in unceded WSÁNEC’ territories on Vancouver Island. She is the author of two previous poetry collections, The Reflecting Pool (Pedlar Press, 2009) and Air-Proof Green (Pedlar Press, 2012), as well as a non-fiction book, Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star Books, 2012). Acker teaches geography, Canadian studies and literature at the University of Victoria and Camosun College.
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E.J. Hughes: Canadian War Artist by Robert Amos (TouchWood Editions) – Non-Fiction
- E. J. Hughes: Canadian War Artist features seventy artworks from the Canadian War Museum’s holdings, expanded with many personal photos and sketches from the artist’s papers. The narrative situates Hughes’s wartime work within the broader context of his life and his development as an artist. With the care and knowledge of a fellow artist, Amos draws the reader into this important chapter in the life of E. J. Hughes and Canadian art.
- Robert Amos has published eleven books on art—including three bestselling volumes on the life and work of beloved Canadian artist E. J. Hughes—and was the arts columnist for Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper for more than thirty years. Amos was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1995 and is an Honorary Citizen of Victoria. He lives in Oak Bay, British Columbia, with his wife, artist Sarah Amos.
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Red Dust and Cicada Songs by Mary Bomford (Caitlin Press)– Non-Fiction
- Red Dust and Cicada Songs describes the formative years of Mary Bomford’s life working as a teacher in Zambia, and the long-lasting impact those years imprinted upon her.
- Mary Bomford has written a series of family histories including Lou Hamel: CPR Telegrapher, held in the Camrose Railway Museum, and Yvonne’s Yesterdays held in the archives of the Sisters of St. Ann, Pacific Northwest. Mary has volunteered for Amnesty International and raised funds for African AIDS Angels. She worked in Special Education for most of her teaching career.
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This House Is Not a Home by Katłįà (Roseway Publishing) – Fiction
- An intergenerational coming-of-age novel, This House Is Not a Home follows Kǫ̀, a Dene man who grew up entirely on the land before being taken to residential school. When he finally returns home, he struggles to connect with his family: his younger brother whom he has never met, his mother because he has lost his language, and an absent father whose disappearance he is too afraid to question.
- Katłįà is a Dene woman from the Northwest Territories. Previously serving as a councillor for her First Nation, Yellowknives Dene, she is an activist, poet and columnist and law student in Indigeous Legal Orders. Katłįà writes about Indigenous injustices with a focus on the North. Katłįà’s first novel, Land-Water-Sky, won the NorthWoods Book Awards (2021).
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Confessions with Keith by Pauline Holdstock (Biblioasis) – Fiction
- Preoccupied with her fledgling literary career, intent on the all-consuming consolations of philosophy, and scrambling to meet the demands of her four children, the acutely myopic and chronically inattentive Vita Glass doesn’t notice that her house and her marriage are competing to see which can fall apart fastest.
- Pauline Holdstock is an award-winning novelist, short fiction writer and essayist. Her books have been published in the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, Brazil and Portugal. In Canada, her work has been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. In 2016, The Hunter and the Wild Girl won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.
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Thank you to our Sponsors, for their generous contributions.
The Victoria Book Prize Society acknowledges that we live and work on the traditional territories of many First Nations, including but not limited to BOḰEĆEN (Pauquachin), MÁLEXEȽ (Malahat), P’a:chi:da?aht (Pacheedaht), Pune’laxutth’ (Penelekut), Sc’ianew (Cheanuh), Songhees, SȾÁUTW̱ (Tsawout), T’Sou-ke, W̱JOȽEȽP (Tsartlip), W̱SIKEM (Tseycum), and xʷsepsəm (Esquimalt).