December 12, 2013 - 11:26 AM
VANCOUVER - Finalists for the lucrative B.C. national non-fiction award include books by environmental journalist J.B. MacKinnon and former Globe and Mail correspondent Graeme Smith.
Smith's memoir "The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan" makes the cut after already having won the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for excellence in non-fiction.
It's pitted against MacKinnon's book "The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be;" Carolyn Abraham's "The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us;" Margaret MacMillan's "The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914" and the latest from two-time Governor General's Award nominee Thomas King, "The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America."
All five finalists are also on the long list for the $25,000 RBC Taylor Prize, previously known as the Charles Taylor Prize.
The winner of B.C.'s $40,000 prize will be announced at a ceremony in Vancouver in February 2014.
The national prize is run by the British Columbia Achievement Foundation, an independent foundation established and endowed by the province to celebrate excellence in the arts, humanities, enterprise, and community service.
A jury including Globe and Mail books editor Jared Bland and author Anna Porter narrowed a field of 141 books down to five finalists.
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Online: www.bcachievement.com
News from © The Canadian Press, 2013